Fairytale, Refuted
by glasshibou
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a fairytale. It all sort of went downhill from there.
1. Chapter 1

Sometimes, Sarah wished she had red hair. Her friend Steffi from middle school had red hair even though nobody else in her family did. Steffi survived the teasing about milkmen and FedEx drivers and went on to become a model on the runways in Paris and Milan, or at least that's what Sarah had heard last. Having just gone over Punnett squares in biology, Sarah knew even then that Steffi's case was most likely just a quirk of genetics. Some ancestor had passed it down long, long, long ago so that it could grace the head of the girl today. If Steffi had children, they might have red hair too; that would all depend on who was filling out the other half of the Punnett square.

Magic was a lot like red hair.

Long, long, long ago there existed a king. His name was Berwyn, and he trapped a god inside the thought of a fairytale. Berwyn trafficked in magic himself, so it was more of a fair fight than it should have been. The god cursed him just before he was sealed away. Berwyn's glory would fade. He was forgotten by history, except for those few scholars who almost seemed to exist outside of it.

King Berwyn the Brave, Conqueror of the Low Lands, Lord of the Castle of the Moon, Protector of the Bronze Sun, passed into legend much more completely than others passed into legend. He simply ceased to exist in any meaningful way; his castle disappeared, his accomplishments faded away, and his people largely forgot him. The only reminder that he existed at all were his children.

All fifteen of them.

The god had never been one to take his wrath out on children, which would one day be his undoing.

Berwyn's family scattered in the hundreds of years since his disappearance. Most of them died out through disease or war or because they were witches. His family tree withered and died as the last remnants of the god's retaliation found them and destroyed them.

All but one branch, anyway, which is how a forgotten queenling came to be living in the suburbs of New England.

Magic, like red hair, is sometimes a quirk of genetics. Sometimes it skips generation after generation, leaving people to forget that their family ever once had red hair. Red hair (or magic) can sometimes be so completely forgotten that when a child is born with it, nobody is quite sure what to do.

Sarah was not born with red hair, but she was born with magic and a curse hanging over her head. The curse might once have manifested as a vengeful spirit, or a great beast. It appeared instead to her as a book, sputtering along on what little magic it had left. Sarah, who might not have had survival instincts as strong as they should have been, almost immediately fell in love with the book the moment she saw it sitting on the public library's shelf.

So she stole it.

But was it theft if it was meant for you, if it had followed your bloodline through the ages? Sarah, if asked, would have said no, but nobody asked and so she never knew. Besides, nobody ever came looking for it again. The librarians never even knew it was gone, much less that it was there in the first place. The long-lost great, great, many-times great granddaughter of Berwyn, who did not have red hair but did have magic, forgot about the book for four years after she plucked it from the shelves of the public library. It lived, like lots of other half-magical things, under her bed where it collected dust. It sat, and waited, and like the god trapped within its pages, it was almost completely forgotten.

Sarah only remembered it again when Karen had yelled at her enough that she finally actually cleaned her room instead of just shoving everything under her bed or into her closet. Once she rediscovered the slim little novel, she wondered if she should be ashamed of herself. After all, thievery was a crime, and she had forgotten she even committed it. Feeling that she might as well justify it to herself, she sat down and read it.

And then she read it again.

Her room did not get cleaned that day.

It wasn't long before she knew the book by heart and had conscripted her stepmother into helping her fashion a costume so that she could act her favorite parts of it out. Sarah became a frequent installation at the park not too far away from her house because her backyard was not grand enough for the sets called for in the book. The park wasn't either, but at least it had a small pond and a bridge.

 _And then_

She wished away her brother on the night of her sixteenth birthday. She hadn't really meant to, except she sort of did. The Goblin King, the creature from her book, appeared and spirited her little half-brother away in the dark of the night.

 _No matter_ , Sarah thought. She was sure that she was the protagonist in this story. It didn't help her ego that in this matter, she was correct; she won her brother back and was home by midnight, like so many other fairytale princesses. Real life was welcome back, after her experience. She appreciated it—who, when finding that they are leaving their childhood behind, would say no to one last magical adventure?—but also appreciated being able to go back to school the next Monday with a fantastic secret burning within her.

She could never tell anybody about the labyrinth, of course, not like she actually expected them to believe her. But she could write story after story about it in her creative writing class and daydream about other adventures with her friends. Eventually, she daydreamed so often that she half-convinced herself that it wasn't quite real, that she had eaten a bad peach that afternoon and dreamed the whole thing up. Sarah was clever enough to know, however, that just because something was a dream didn't mean it wasn't real.

Sarah settled into believing that it was a real dream and went about her life. Toby didn't need to know that he was once wished away (maybe) or that she had come so, so close to possibly losing him. She spent an almost conspicuous amount of time ignoring the fact that in her not-dream, she had reached out for the wish at the very last moment.

But her many-greats grandfather was Berwyn, so one bout of folly could be forgiven. Perhaps many bouts of folly. Not once did she think about the state of the dream she left behind. If she had, she might over pondered over how some of her maybe real friends from the labyrinth were doing now that the sky had, quite literally, crashed down upon them. That part of the fairytale was torn down because it was no longer the fairytale that Berwyn had created to contain the god. It had forgotten, in the long years of his absence, what Berwyn's touch felt like; with Sarah's return it remembered all at once and shook itself out like a dog, ridding itself of everything the god had introduced.

The god was not pleased. He had liked how he had everything set up, and to see it all destroyed irritated him quite a bit. But here was a problem; he was not sure which of the siblings caused the destruction. The girl had been the ones to say the words, but in the service of the baby. The girl had not looked like Berwyn, his old foe; the baby had.

But only one of them had the long-dead king's magic, that much he could tell. Unlike the god's curse, it had only grown over time. The power of what had once surged through an entire family's veins was now concentrated in one of the two interlopers to his kingdom. It had scrambled his senses enough that he could barely tell the two apart. Only two things were sure. The first sure thing was that this last descendant of Berwyn was the only one who could free the god from his warped reality of a prison. The second thing was that he was pretty sure it was the baby.


	2. Chapter 2

_I wish this light would turn green_ , thought Sarah, who had largely forgotten the power of wishes. But that wasn't quite true. She let herself make little wishes that she was sure wouldn't hurt anybody. Wishes made in anger or sorrow were quickly squashed before they could make it too far through her mind. Smaller wishes, like for rain in the evening or extra icing on her slice of cake were fine. In the back seat of her car, Toby kicked the passenger seat beside her.

The light turned green as Sarah scolded him. For a six year old, he was awfully precocious and willful, but that was something that evidently ran in the family.

"I'm tired of being in the car! When are we going to be at the fair?" Toby asked, letting a distinct whine creep into his voice. Sarah stuck out her tongue at him in the rearview mirror. He responded in kind.

"We've got one more light, and then we have to find parking," Sarah said, readjusting her sunglasses. "Which will be an adventure, I'm sure. But then we'll wander around and play games and stuff you so full of ice cream and cotton candy that I have to roll you back into the car. Let mom and dad deal with getting you to sleep tonight," she said, not unkindly. Toby cheered, shaking his six-year-old fists with glee. Their parents—well, their father and Sarah's stepmother—had decided that they needed a date night. Since the fair was open until eleven at night on Saturdays, Sarah had volunteered to take Toby.

The half-siblings made their way eventually to the fair, found parking, and stepped out from the car and into the simmering summer sun. Toby clutched Sarah's hand, having been scared out of running into crowds at random by his own parents. The very first thing they did was find ice cream, which Toby managed to spread over not only all of his face, but through a good portion of his hair as well. They visited the petting zoo, two or three of the more stable looking rides, and a sand art station. The air smelled like sugar, sweat, and the middle of summer.

The fair was held on an expansive park, which meant that by the time the sun had set and it was nearing closing time, Sarah and Toby had managed to not only wander as far away from her car as was possible, but they had also gotten themselves wonderfully lost.

"Ah," Sarah said, running a hand through her hair. Though it was the middle of summer and the days were hot, the nights still sometimes held the memory of a chill. Neither one of them had the foresight to bring a jacket; this was much more forgivable in the six year old. "This is a bit of a pickle, Tobes."

Toby shrugged, and then pointed at what looked suspiciously like a trailer a few meters away. It was brightly painted with pinks and blues and greens in a paisley pattern, and looked too cramped to be able to hold more than two people. "Sarah," said Toby solemnly, "I want to go in _there_."

Sarah said, "what?" and looked at the watch on her wrist. "Little dude, it's like ten forty-nine. We've got ten minutes to scram, and I don't know where my car is."

Toby stared up at her and clutched her hand in the sort of grip a six year old shouldn't have. Sarah sighed.

"Fine. Eat that last bit of funnel cake and we'll see what's up."

Though Toby, being six, was not that great of a reader, Sarah could see that on the side of the trailer was printed the words _Lady Dryw's Fortune Telling_ in curling white script. Sarah didn't know how to pronounce the person's name, so it came out as more of an intelligible babbling when she read it to herself. _What sort of six year old wants to have his fortune read?_ She asked herself, before finally deciding that he was simply attracted to the bright colors.

Together, they knocked on the door. It was opened by a woman who looked to be about Sarah's age. Her skin was dark, but her hair was dyed bright purple. She looked just about as eccentric as her trailer.

"I thought somebody else would be coming," she said, looking Sarah up and down. "You might as well sit down. We don't have too long."

Toby immediately found one of the two plush chairs in the room and clambered into it. Sarah sat down in the other more delicately, unsure of what, exactly, was happening. The chairs sat in front of a table with a literal crystal ball on it.

"Ten dollars," the woman said. "Though I should probably charge double. You've got the look of trouble on you. Anybody ever tell you that before?"

"No," Sarah lied. "But anyway, he's the one who wanted to, uh, see you." The woman cocked her head and glanced at Toby as she shuffled a deck of cards on the table behind the crystal ball.

"Cool. Pick a card, little man," the woman said, offering the deck to Toby. "Doesn't matter where you pick it from. Set it on the table, like that." Toby placed a card on the table. In the dark, Sarah had to squint at it. Seven chalices were depicted on it, each with something different spilling out of them; one had a coiled dragon crawling out of it, while another had what looked like precious gemstones.

"It's pretty," Toby said touching it.

"Yeah," the woman said, staring at it. "You've got some good stuff coming. Have you had dealings with fairies before?" she asked casually. Toby peered up at Sarah as if she might know the answer.

"Uh," Sarah said, shifting uncomfortably. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Hmmm," said the woman as she snatched the card back up and shuffled the deck three more times. "Your turn," she told Sarah, thrusting the cards in her direction. The seriousness of her tone brooked no discussion.

 _Oh, for the love of…_ Sarah picked a card out anyway and squinted at it in the dark before she placed it down on the table. On it, six swords and two people were on a boat.

"You're going somewhere?" the woman asked, not waiting for Sarah to answer before she pointed at the deck and told her to draw another.

"Only back to college tomorrow," Sarah said as she plucked another from the pile. This one made her feel uncomfortable; two people were depicted falling from a tower as fire and smoke billowed out of it. Lightning struck the roof of the building.

"Yikes," the woman said, but Sarah didn't let her say anything else before she snatched another card from the deck. She didn't like the last one she had pulled; no matter the ascribed meaning, it didn't look any good. The last card depicted two people exchanging chalices, smiling faintly at each other. A lion's head stared up at Sarah from the card as she placed it down on the table.

"Some good news at last!" the woman said. "Probably. I mean, it's weird. Are you planning on meeting an old boyfriend?" The woman peered at the card as if reading fine script on the bottom. "Well, maybe not an old boyfriend, but _someone_ who's got a thing for you."

"I'm done," Sarah said, fishing money out of her bag. The tower still stared up at her on the table even though the avoided looking at it. "I don't want the rest of my reading."

"Suit yourself," the woman said, scooping up her cards. "But be careful, okay?"

Sarah shrugged, collected Toby, and dashed out of the tarot reader's trailer. Though she didn't actually believe in messy things like fate or prophecy, it didn't stop her from feeling a little unnerved by the middle card. The first didn't look exactly _fun_ , but the woman's words made it seem like it just meant travel. Sarah hoped it just meant travel.

"I don't think Karen would like it if she knew I took you to a fortune teller, kiddo. Let's keep this between us, okay?"

"Sure," Toby yawned just as Sarah found her car again. By the time Toby was strapped into his seat and they were on the road back home, he was asleep. The sugar rush had faded fast, which suited Sarah just fine. She drove them back to her childhood home and curled up on her old bed to sleep once Toby was safe in his own room.

Sarah dreamed of pacing lions and lightning, and of giant metal disks that gleamed in the sunlight.

In the morning, Sarah woke to the smell of cinnamon buns, coffee, and bacon. Her dreams were largely forgotten; all that she thought she could remember were the wisps of a lion's mane, but even those were fading quickly. She rolled out of bed and looked around at her room again.

Since she lived in a little apartment she shared with a roommate when at college, she didn't really have much cause to be in her old room. All of the things she had left behind she had deemed unimportant at some time, like her childhood toys and books and the girlish white and pink furniture she had flatly refused to take with her to her school apartment.

Her bookshelf sat small and sadly vacant, with nothing but a few slim volumes and forgotten toys left on it. She thought that the next time she had a free weekend, she should probably throw a lot of it out; there was no use keeping it when she planned to move out once she got a job anyway.

She picked up a music box and it ground out a note or two before giving up. The girl in her voluminous white dress didn't even bother to spin in place like Sarah remembered her once doing. Sarah remembered, vividly, wearing a dress much like that one in a dream that might have been real some years ago. She remembered the dancing. And the king. And the clock.

She shuddered and put it back on her bookshelf. Now that she thought of it, the Goblin King's fluffy hair reminded her a little of a lion's mane.

But, she reminded herself, the two things were not linked in the slightest. When she finally descended to the kitchen, she had put out all thoughts of lions and kings. It was better that way, of course; on Monday she would be back in her one summer class with the rest of the poor souls who shared it with her, and she wouldn't be free for another two weeks. Real life kept beckoning her back. Not for the first time, she was grateful; Sarah knew she had a tendency to get lost in her own daydreams. It didn't help that she had a vivid imagination, as many frustrated teachers had told her before.

It wasn't long before Sarah found herself back in her car and on her way back to her apartment. The two hour long drive was softened by the fact that she knew her roommate would be out until very early Monday morning; Alyssa's classes in the summer were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which generally meant that she would be out and about on every other day. While Sarah liked Alyssa, and Alyssa liked Sarah, they both conceded that they were very different people with very different interests and their lives worked better together if they didn't try to force them upon each other. Ergo, no parties in the apartment. Ever.

Boyfriends or girlfriends, while not disallowed, had to be discussed beforehand. The walls were thin, and both girls were light sleepers.

By the time Sarah pulled into her parking place and dragged her weekend bag up to her second-floor apartment, she felt almost dead on her feet. Dinner would be the Chinese leftovers that she hoped were still good, and then she had every intention of crashing into her own bed. Sarah threw her bag into her room.

It made a very distinct, very loud _thump!_ noise that it should not have, considering that it should have contained only clothes.

Sarah nudged it with her toe and found that there was a solid surface inside.

It was a book, she discovered when she dumped the contents of the bag out on her bed. But not just any book. It was _the_ book, the one that described the Goblin King and the girl he had fallen in love with. The ink was faded so that it was almost illegible. One of the pages fell out. It was crumbling as she held it, even though it shouldn't have been. Gingerly, she held it closed as if it might bite her—then she dumped it unceremoniously in the kitchen garbage can. An hour later, the leftovers she didn't eat were thrown in on top of it.

As far as Sarah could see, there was no good that could come from a stolen book that had suddenly decided to follow her around. No good at all, especially when the last dealings she had with it had taken her to a magical place she preferred to think of as a dream.

And after all, it had to have been a dream—a week after her adventure, when homework had gotten tedious and she wanted to feel magic pressing against her skin again, she sat in front of her mirror and tried to call her friends again and again and again.

They did not come.

That was the moment that Sarah had decided the whole affair had been a dream and that she was done with it; after all, the trappings of her dream could be found in her room. The Escher print above her bed, the music box, the doll that looked so much like the king himself, the labyrinth game—all things that she could see herself pulling into some fantastic dream.

The book could have been Toby playing a trick. The idea was solid and real-feeling; Sarah decided that was her truth. Once she felt secure in her belief, the worry that had gripped her washed away and left nothing but the exhaustion that had plagued her earlier.

* * *

 **A/N**

Here's an early/extra update. My finals have started, so please either end my misery or leave reviews to get me through these troubling times.


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah did not recall dreaming, though she did, very loudly. Loud enough, in fact, that she was heard even deep within the recesses of the fairytale Berwyn set up to house a god. This was not necessarily surprising; blood calls to blood and magic calls to magic, and Sarah called to both.

In her dreams, she felt heat from a great bronze disk reflecting sunlight. It blinded her and left spots in her vision until she looked away, but she was afraid to look away for too long; something seemed wrong about it, though she couldn't tell what. No trees grew around it, but she also seemed to be stranded in the middle of the desert.

"You know," the grounded sun seemed to say from at her feet. "They say that if you eat the heart of a goddess, you live forever."

"Then it's good I'm not a goddess, I'd say." But she _was_ the many-greats granddaughter of a fairytale king, which was much the same thing even if she didn't know it. "And how would you even eat the heart of a goddess, anyway?"

Sarah decided that she did not want her question answered, and turned away from the bright circle.

And then, of course, there was the Goblin King. He didn't seem as happy to see her as she thought somebody who was supposed to be in love with her would be. The book had gotten most other things right before she had even fallen inside it, but perhaps it had its limits. But the thought of such a magical creature—and a king, no less—being madly in love with her had a certain abstract appeal. Not something she'd want to deal with in real life, exactly, but in a dream it might have been nice.

Too bad _that_ wasn't happening anytime soon.

" _You!_ " the king snarled, taking one purposeful stride towards Sarah as she dreamt. He looked angrier than she had ever seen anybody be in her life, including the time she snuck out of the house with Karen's car in the middle of the night before she had her license. The wide disk behind her seemed to heat up.

"Goblin King," she said. "Oh, no."

 _Now would be a good time to wake up_ , she told herself, and woke up.

In the dark of her room, where there was no Goblin King or heat emanating from metal buried in the ground, Sarah felt safe. She sat up and readjusted her shirt, which had rolled up uncomfortably, deciding in that moment that a glass of cool water would be rather nice. She flicked on her bedside light and sat at the edge of her bed.

"Oh _no_ ," she said, full of dismay.

"You are repeating yourself," the Goblin King said from where he sat on her reading chair in the corner of her room. It was only kind of uncomfortable and very spindly, which made Sarah wonder why he picked it, or why her brain had picked it if this proved to be just another dream. Removed from her sensation of reality, she had to admit that he cut a rather imposing figure on it; when _he_ used it, it looked like a throne. When _Sarah_ used it, Alyssa told her she looked like a librarian. It was all rather unfair.

Sarah reached up and pinched herself on the collarbone. The sharp burst of pain told her that she was definitely, inexplicably awake. The Goblin King was outfitted in well-fitting dark jeans, a dark, clingy shirt, and what seemed to be a leather jacket. The pendant that he wore she remembered from the couldn't-have-been-a-dream. Overall, he sort of looked like one of those artsy guys one might run into at a coffee shop on their biweekly poetry nights. _Holy shit_ , Sarah's brain provided. Whether it was because he looked _really, really good_ , or because there was a literal fairytale villain sitting in her bedroom she couldn't parse out.

"What," she said carefully, "are you doing here?" There was always the possibility that she was losing her grip on reality, though why that would happen while she was taking a single summer class and not a full course load she couldn't quite figure out. If anything, her nervous breakdown should have happened last semester when she was taking six classes, working part time in the school library, and she and her boyfriend called it quits on a two year relationship. Instead, she had gone to a few clubs with Alyssa and eaten way too many cookies.

 _Perhaps,_ some detached part of her thought, _this is a delayed reaction_.

The Goblin King smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. Instead, it afforded Sarah the perfect view of his too-sharp-to-be-quite-right teeth. The realness of the entire situation crashed down on her all at once—whatever had been insisting that it was a dream or that it was a breakdown gave up and shipped off—and Sarah felt herself start to shake. She hoped it wasn't visible.

But then, he was sometimes an owl, she remembered. Hopefully he was more manlike than birdlike most of the time, but she was certain she had seen him shapeshift and fly off at the end of their first encounter. His smile widened, but it only made him look ferocious.

"Look, I don't know what you want—" she started after taking a deep breath.

"Where is the child, Sarah?" Her brain took a second or two to catch up. When it did, she scowled at him and crossed her arms.

"Toby? What do you want with Toby? I won him back; you can't have him."

The Goblin King stood and glided over to her, barely giving Sarah the time she needed to stand as well. From what little she knew about… whatever the Goblin King was, she knew that she had to be on equal footing—or at least make it seem like she was. She couldn't help but to feel that she was severely underdressed for the occasion.

"I have business with the scion of Berwyn," he said as if she was meant to have any clue as to what that meant. "And I believe that young _Toby_ may be that person."

Several emotions competed for Sarah's attentions at the same time. First, naturally, was fear; the Goblin King, stealer of children, was demanding to see her little brother. The second was anger—how dare this glittering malevolence dare enter her life again? Confusion was a close third.

But the one winning out above them all was something akin, probably, to hysteria. The corners of Sarah's lips curved upwards and she did the last thing she would have wanted to do in front of the Goblin King, had she been completely in control of her reactions.

Sarah giggled.

"Toby is six years old. He can't be a scion of anything!" She watched as the smile slid off his face and wondered if her speech at the end of her run actually meant anything at all; there was a lot more she'd like to say, given the chance, but she also didn't want to be dropped in the middle of an oubliette. "Besides, if you're looking for him—and I am _not_ telling you where he his—why would you even bother to show up _here_?"

Though she liked her bedroom well enough, it wasn't the largest room in the world, and it definitely wasn't one she was used to having guests—or uninvited Goblin Kings—in. The king just looked so out of place, standing beside her stacks of textbooks, with her open closet behind him. She made a mental note to start keeping it shut. And every second he seemed to inch closer and closer, though she was sure that was just her imagination.

"You called me; I would have thought you remembered that," he said, feigning his casual tone. This close to him she could see how tense he was; he practically vibrated with his irritation. Sarah made a mental note of that, too.

"No," she told him, pressing her hands up against his chest so she could give him a little shove. "I did not. Except," she finally conceded, "in that dream. But that hardly counts; that was a dream." She almost told him that dreams weren't real, but she also knew that that wasn't quite the truth.

He wrapped his hands— _he's wearing leather gloves_ , her brain helpfully supplied—around her wrists and tugged her a little closer to that she could see the malicious glint in his eyes. She glared back up at him, and they were almost nose to nose. Her toes were crushed up against the boots he wore.

So naturally, that was when Alyssa made her appearance.

"Oops," said Alyssa, who wore a party dress and a furiously red blush. "I _totally_ did not mean to walk in on you guys, but oh my God, Sarah, your door was right open!" Alyssa gestured to the door that was indeed open. Sarah turned and stared at her friend, mortified for no reason. Well, maybe a little reason; having another showdown with your childhood fairytale arch-nemesis was a bit of an intimate act. And Alyssa was drawing some _very wrong_ conclusions.

Even as she stared at her friend, she could feel the Goblin King's gaze on her face.

 _Think, think, think quickly, Sarah!_ She couldn't say she didn't know who this was—that would bring the police, and Sarah didn't like to think of their chances against the Goblin King. Or hers or Alyssa's, for that matter. There was a lot, in general, that she didn't like to think of.

"It's not like _that_ ," she finally said through the embarrassment lodged in her throat. "We weren't—oh my God—we weren't—don't think—this is my boyfriend," she made herself say. The Goblin King dropped her wrists like they scalded him and she wished she could see his face. Or not, because he might just blow the whole thing here and now. Then Alyssa would definitely call the police, and a psychiatrist for good measure, and Sarah's life would probably be over for good.

And then the Goblin King did something that made her heart almost stop right then and there.

He draped an arm over her shoulders and held out a hand to her roommate.

"Good evening. My name is Jareth. Sarah neglected to mention that she had a companion."

Alyssa tittered in the doorway, but didn't enter the room to take his hand. Sarah mentally willed her away because whatever was coming next could not possibly be good. At all. For her, at any rate; she was sure the Goblin King thought humiliating her was hilarious.

"We're just roommates. Sarah, where did you find this guy?"

"Coffee shop," said Sarah hollowly, wondering if it was too much to ask for a small miracle.

"Well, goodnight. Let me know if you have a brother," she directed at the Goblin King. Alyssa retreated into her own room, and Sarah vaulted over her bed to close her door. She didn't lock it, just in case she needed to make a quick escape.

When she turned around, the Goblin King was back to grinning at her.

" _Not a word_ ," she ground out at him, balling her hands into fists. "Don't you dare—you show up here in the middle of the night, saying that some stupid dream was invitation enough, and then _I_ have to cover for you. Not. A. Word." Sarah stayed on her side of the room, leaving her bed as a barrier between them. She'd rather have a wall. Or flamethrowers.

The Goblin King said, "You are not a very good liar."

"You should just leave," Sarah told him, pointing an accusing finger. "You've already caused me too much trouble, and you've been here for what, five minutes? Ten minutes ago you were a bad dream from six years ago. And _now…_ " she gestured at him. " _Now_ , you're here to reclaim my little brother, or something. Well I have news for you, he's not a scion of anything. We're not a family that has scions, we're a family that has college educations and an alcoholic aunt," she told him with a sense of finality.

"Your family is older than you might imagine," he snapped at her, miles away from the being that had played along with her lie to Alyssa. Sarah was abruptly reminded, not for the first time, that he was something other than human and reacted as such. "Your family has responsibilities that you cannot imagine. Responsibility cannot be shirked out of ignorance; your brother has been born to this responsibility."

"I don't believe you. You've tricked—you've tried to trick me before." Sarah squinted at him, wondering if she should turn on her overhead light. Her bedside lamp was not exactly kind of the eyes, and it cast harsh shadows over his face. He looked furious, but Sarah doubted that was the lamp's fault.

"Go away, Goblin King."

* * *

 **A/N**

Thanks for the reviews, guys! My finals are done, and I survived.

PS: Jareth's behavior in this chapter (and maybe in one or two more) is like... not okay. Definitely falls under the umbrella of harassment. In an effort to be a responsible adult I'm going to go ahead and say that magical creature or not, if anybody follows you around and such, kick them where it hurts and call the cops. I know that as a fandom we're all probably used to this sentiment, but it bears repeating.


	4. Chapter 4

The fact that the Goblin King had appeared suddenly after six years of silence on the labyrinth's end was not the thing that really surprised Sarah. While she was embarrassed about it, she wasn't even really surprised that their most recent meeting had gone sideways enough to leave her roommate with the impression that they were dating, of all things. What surprised her the most was that when she told him to leave, he actually left.

He left an ungodly amount of glitter in his wake, but he left. One minute he was there, and the next, he was not. Poof. Gone.

She hadn't even wished anything.

The next morning she called home before class to make sure that Toby was still there, as he should have been—he was—and she told him over the phone that if any strange men tried to talk to him, he was to kick them between the legs and run far. Toby solemnly promised over the phone to follow all of Sarah's directions and to call her if anything happened. He was acting like it was some sort of game, which didn't bother Sarah; at least it wouldn't scare him—she hoped.

For the entire morning, she saw neither Goblin King hair nor Goblin King hide, though she knew it was too much to ask to keep that as a permanent thing. She fully expected him to pop back up during some extremely inopportune time, like when she was trying to grocery shop, or put gas in her car, or maybe brush her teeth. She did not expect him to swagger in smack in the middle of her European history course, or to make a big show of sitting down next to her. Something about the necessity of paying for classes made her think that they were somehow sacrosanct.

Nobody else seemed to notice that he hadn't been a part of the class for the past few weeks, but they all definitely noticed the way he purposefully invaded her personal space.

"Knock this off," she said through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle her notes back from him without causing too much of a commotion. He let go suddenly, causing Sarah to land heavily back in her chair. "You're being a nuisance. I would have thought you'd have been scarier, considering how many times you tried to kill me before."

He bared his teeth at her in an approximation of a smile. "I can be frightening," he said, and the pen in his hand transformed into a scorpion, which he shoved under her nose. Sarah managed not to scream, though she did make a shrill squeak when she batted it out of his hand. It clattered on the floor, a pen again. "I attempted a search for your brother, of course," he said as if he hadn't just almost caused Sarah to have a coronary event. "It seems that Berwyn's old magic still holds strong. I cannot find you if not called."

"Who…? You know what? I don't even care. Good. You're not going to find him."

He leaned dangerously close, close enough that Sarah could feel her heart thumping in her chest, and smiled into her hair. "I will find out eventually," he said, and kissed the crown of her head. Her elbow only missed his stomach because he was no longer there.

* * *

He followed her to lunch and ate half of her French fries. Sarah hadn't thought it was a particularly kingly thing to do, but when swatting his hand away or switching tables failed to work, she simply gave up, bought another order, and left the store.

To his own surprise, he discovered that he rather liked following her around. The human world had made drastic changes since had had last existed in it. The food seemed to be an improvement, though he found it overall to be too noisy for his liking. But Sarah herself was a rare treat; in his occasional dealings with humans, most had cowered before him, or acted with deference that was too humble to be sincere. Sarah did not seem to care about any of that, though he thought it was possible she did not know what he was.

He followed her through a store full of food, which she called a grocery store, and then back to her apartment, where she made him stand outside until she had put everything away. When she came back outside, she stared up and him and puffed her checks out in the way that he now knew meant that she was thinking. Perhaps he had been starved of company for too long, but he was starting to consider her somewhat endearing.

What made her less endearing was the fact that he could detect traces of Berwyn in her. Not in appearance—she was too far away from him for that—but in the tiny sparks of magic that leapt from her skin on occasion. The only thing that held him back from insisting that she was the scion was the memory of the overwhelming magic in the labyrinth. That had not come in spurts or shudders; that had been a tidal wave, ready to crash down on him. And if she was the scion, then her path would undoubtedly take her far away from him.

And here was a secret: the book had not been wrong. While much of it was a lie, too much of reality had seeped into it. The Goblin King did indeed fall in love with the girl, though he wasn't sure if he had granted her certain gifts or not. But the girl was a descendant of Berwyn, and her brother the scion.

He had mixed emotions on that.

When she could think of no more errands to run, they found themselves at a coffee shop that played quiet guitar music. It was the sort of place Sarah thought she might have actually met somebody like the Goblin King, if he had been less Goblin King and more human.

"Why is it, exactly, that you're following me around? If you're really a king, don't you have more important things to do than to be a nuisance?" She tried to act casual, but there was still an undercurrent of anxiety running through her. Somehow, facing off with him had been easier when she was sixteen.

"What a question," he said, as if she had just told a joke. "Of course I have something better to be doing; do you think I am here for the pleasure of your company?" He waved his hand behind him, as if highlighting all of the other invisible things he had to do. "No; if I really must say it again, Sarah, I am here because I have business with your brother."

Sarah huffed, threw a textbook she wasn't using at his head, and opened a different one to a random page. For the next hour she ignored him completely, while he read Shakespearian sonnets. Eventually, both the silence and his staring wore her down.

"Goblin King," she said from over a textbook she had been using as an excuse to watch him. "Were you telling Alyssa the truth? Is your name really Jareth?"

He tilted his head to the side and stared at her for along moment. His gaze clearly made her uncomfortable, and he made no move to tone it down.

"It is one of them," he answered, turning his attention back to one of the textbooks Sarah was neglecting.

"Well, can I call you that?" she asked peevishly. "It's getting really old calling you 'Goblin King' all day, and while I don't want to have another bonding session, it's definitely less of a mouthful. And people will probably stop looking at me funny."

Jareth smiled in response and stood abruptly, offering Sarah a small mock bow.

"As you wish, of course. If you will excuse me, I have some other place to be."

And then she thought he left the coffee shop through the front door, but she couldn't really be sure. He seemed to be there one moment and then gone the next; it was confusing for somebody who had only ever read about magic before.

The rest of the day was suspiciously quiet. Every time she turned a corner, she half expected him to be there in all his leather-clad, confusing glory. She called home again, just to check in, and found that Toby was still safe and untouched. Somehow, this made her feel almost worse; she knew that something was going to happen, but she didn't know what or when. Her hours at the library ticked by at the slowest rate possible, and she spent most of it trying to look up the name that the Goblin King had said more than once. There was nothing in any of the books she could find on Berwyn, though she allowed for the possibility that she was looking in the wrong place. Perhaps the history section wasn't the right place, but she didn't have any other ideas. If this was somebody that Toby—and by extension, probably her as well—was related to, then it had to be a real person.

But there was nothing in any of the mythology books she checked in, either, which was somehow a relief and a disappointment. Sarah wasn't sure which one she should be more irritated at. It seemed that he had never existed at all, and Sarah wouldn't put it past the Goblin King to make something up just to confuse her.

She gave up once she decided that it was safe to leave the library after her shift. Sarah hadn't seen Jareth in a few hours, and she half wondered, half hoped he had gone back to wherever it was that he came from. At any rate, it allowed her to go home and take a bath in peace.

Alyssa came home in the middle of Sarah drying her hair, which would not normally have been a problem at all. The problem was that she brought bad news back with her. Of course, Alyssa didn't know it was bad news; she led a blissfully human life that happily excluded Goblin Kings and their related perils.

"Sarah!" Alyssa called into the apartment. "I bumped into your boyfriend earlier today. He wanted to know where your parents lived because he said he wanted to surprise you with a trip back home. You didn't tell me it's Toby's birthday, by the way, so I'll have to rush out tomorrow and get him a card so you can take it. Anyway, I swore to secrecy, but I figured I would give you a heads up anyway so you can pick out a few cute outfits." Alyssa waggled her eyebrows at Sarah. "If you know what you mean."

"And… you told him?" Sarah asked, trying to keep her voice light.

"Yeah," Alyssa said. "That's not a problem, is it?"

Sarah forced a smile on her face and gave Alyssa a light hug. Sometime later, Sarah would have to tell her that she really, really hated surprises, and to please ask before handing out knowledge about where her family lived, even to people Sarah said were her boyfriends. But it wasn't Alyssa's fault.

When Sarah saw the Goblin King next, she would kill him. She snuck into her room and called her family; it was too late for much of a conversation, and her father asked too many questions when Sarah told him to make sure that Toby was kept inside and checked on through the night.

"I _wish_ ," Sarah said exasperated, "that you would just believe me. One of my, uh, classmates said that there's a nasty bug going around. I just want to make sure that none of you get it."

"Sure, Sarah," her father said. "Of course we'll keep an eye on Toby. Wouldn't want him to get sick, after all."

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, said goodbye, and hung up the phone.

But the Goblin King—she didn't want to call him by his name, not when she was so ready to slaughter him—would undoubtedly still find a way to her little brother. Perhaps he already had; the idea of a changeling was something that Sarah was at least familiar with, even if she wasn't very knowledgeable. And the king had been gone for hours, possibly. Alyssa couldn't remember when, exactly, she had met with him.

Sarah ground her teeth together and slipped into jeans and a tee shirt, throwing her hair into a sloppy, sopping wet ponytail. She grabbed her car keys from her bedside table and clutched them in her fist.

"I wish I could give that horrible Goblin King a piece of my mind."


	5. Chapter 5

Once upon a time there was a man.

No, that's not right.

Once upon a time there was a god. As gods went, he was rather humble; he wanted only his forest and a quiet life to himself. The forest was expansive, stretching from coast to coast on the land; much of it, during the god's time, was untouched by humans. In the forest lived many creatures now relegated to fairytales and mythology. The god watched over them all, even the few stalwart humans who wandered into the borders. Unlike other gods, he demanded no tithes, demanded no sacrifices. At first.

He kept all his power contained within his forest, content to let the rest of the world wash around him and his. If he was deaf to the prayers sent to him by outsiders, well, he was a god and gods may do as they please.

Once upon a time there was a king. The king was a rather brave man, but as many humans are, he was greedy. He inherited from his father a great burden sealed within a metal sun, but he longed for his own story, to give his people a reason to remember his name when all else had faded. The king was not from the forest, but the land he hailed from existed not that far away. Once day, while exploring, the king looked upon the god's lands and thought, _I would rather like to have this_.

His men entered with bitter iron axes the very next day and tore down hundreds of living trees. Though the men were deaf to them, their screams echoed through the rest of the forest. _Please,_ they called out to their god, _please do something._

As time passed, more trees came down, though much slower than they had in the beginning. Men would find their blades dulled overnight, or their work animals would escape their pens, or they would somehow find that they had slept through an entire week after eating the strange fruit that grew from some of the trees. The king brought more and more of his people to live on the edge of the forest, hoping to teach them that there was nothing to be feared. After all, what was a god of one simple forest to all of the might of King Berwyn?

Not much, his people answered, and set up homesteads on the graves of the god's fallen trees. Time passed. Children were born.

And in the dead of night, children were taken.

It was a terrible morning, the first time it happened. A bereft mother woke to suddenly find her newborn babe quite gone, without a single trace left behind that she had ever even existed. They set up a search party, of course, though nobody quite thought to check the forest. Then the next night a little toddler with dark curls was taken, until after a week, seven children had been spirited away.

The border-folk had started to eye the forest out of fear, though nobody quite dared to step inside. They pleaded and left offerings for the resident god, who ignored them if he even knew of them.

 _You take something of mine_ , he seemed to be saying in his silence, _and I will take something of yours_.

It took much longer for open war to be declared on the god in the forest. It all started when Berwyn sent his eldest son to deal with the missing children. A truce might have been called, after all. The children were safe within the forest, kept safe and warm in preparation for a stalemate. There could have been peace, had the son not set fire to the eastern edge.

That evening, with the sky still painted orange from the flames, with the ash still hanging heavy in the air, the god appeared. He was nothing like the humans were expecting, but gods rarely were. He was almost stick thin, and seemed almost too sharp to be real—but he was real, and he was terrible in his fury.

The god struck down the prince with a single blow.

That is how wars start, of course, but the god did not quite understand that. He was simply repaying in kind; he did not count on the king stepping further over his bounds. Had he ventured from his forest in his long years of existing, he might have known humans better.

King Berwyn himself appeared next, with men and weapons. All the animals and all the trees of the very forest rose up in retaliation. The two sides clashed, and the earth was soaked in blood by the end of the first day.

Here is something that the books, had they remembered even Berwyn, would not tell you: the god was tired. He invited Berwyn into the depths of his forest to discuss a deal, for though the god limited himself to his forest of a kingdom, his power was great and his will was strong.

 _Listen,_ the god said. _None of this need ever happen; if you but agree, I will rewrite the stars. You can go back and leave your mistakes behind_.

Instead, the king cast a deep curse. The very magic that might have saved them all swallowed up the god and his unending forest; the god, in his last few moments of godhood, spat a curse back out on the king. The king, so obsessed with leaving his legacy that he upended a god, would be forgotten by his own people. The family that he had attempted to protect would die out.

And that was how Jareth, the Goblin King, forest god of old, had spent many an epoch. He had been trapped in some perversion of his own lands, shaped to Berwyn's will, while the rest of the world went on and forgot not only about him, but about all of his brethren as well. His forest had been Berwyn's kingdom until it forgot to be and it was his own again—until even _that_ ended when the two children waltzed in and back out again, somehow rekindling the memory of Berwyn.

At the time, Jareth had thought it was the infant. Not only had he looked like the ancient king, but Jareth never thought his old foe would have allowed any of the familial magic to be inherited by a woman, no matter how headstrong or clever that woman might be. It galled him to know, now, that he was wrong.

It frightened him that he had underestimated Sarah so thoroughly.

But there she was, wearing a baggy shirt that fell halfway to her knees, jeans that had clearly seen better days, and a scowl that could fell a horse at thirty paces. Luckily, he was not a horse. Unfortunately, she was much closer than thirty paces.

" _You_ ," she seethed, "how _dare_ you."

Jareth blinked back at her, sure that the space she was occupying had been vacant just a second before. She had popped into existence just like he so often did, which could only mean one thing.

Sarah, not Toby, was Berwyn's scion. Sarah, not Toby, would have to be responsible for all that was going wrong. She, the very person he had found himself least wanting to drag into the mess, had planted herself solidly in the middle of it. He caught the frown forming on his face and turned it into an arch sneer.

"So lovely to see you, Sarah," he crooned, offering a gloved hand to her. "I see you were able to speak with Alyssa; she's really a very charming girl, if perhaps too trusting."

Sarah took a deep breath, as if preparing to tell him off, when she noticed that she was not quite in her bedroom anymore. When she had first seen the Goblin King, she thought that her ill-spoken wish had brought him to her. Instead, she found herself standing on the front lawn of her parents' house in the perfect position to look right into the living room window. Her anger faltered for just a second, and her breath caught in her throat.

"What did you-? Never mind, it doesn't matter. Step away from my house," she ordered, pointing an accusing finger at him. "If you so much as take a step closer to it, I'll…" Sarah couldn't think of a threat that sounded plausible, so she took a step closer and glowered at him even more. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but you need to take me back to my apartment _right now_."

"Oh, dear, Sarah," the Goblin King said, and blinked at her once. "You can't possibly think that _I_ have anything to do with you being here, can you?" He watched as she scanned the area around her as if she were searching for some alternate means of her sudden transport. When he saw her furrow her thick brow and pucker her lips for another retort, he stepped back in.

"My congratulations and condolences, Sarah," the Goblin King said, looking impressive in the patch of moonlight he had positioned himself in. "It seems that you are the sole true inheritor of the mess Berwyn left behind." He bowed deeply, and Sarah couldn't tell if he meant it as a mockery or not.

"I don't know what that means. Will you leave Toby alone? And the rest of my family?" Her eyes accused him of a crime he hadn't committed, and she shook her keys at him threateningly with each jab of her finger.

"My business is with Berwyn's scion; I had believed that young Toby was that individual, but seems that I was wrong." He smiled at her, but it was filled with too many teeth to be a sign of happiness. Sarah suddenly felt very, very afraid; the image of the burning tower on the card she had pulled floated through her mind, and she shuddered a little.

"I don't have any business with you. You can just go back to wherever it is that you came from," she told him, pretending that her shudder was from the light nighttime breeze. "And I want to go back home."

"You can make that happen very easily, Sarah; magic is, as I assume it always was, at your disposal. You need only make it work for you." The Goblin King held out a hand to her again, but she still didn't take it. Instead, she stared at him as if he had sprouted a second head. He tried, and failed, not to be offended. "Take my hand," he urged her, "so that we may have this conversation somewhere more pleasant."

Sarah, despite her better judgment, took his hand and clutched it gingerly. The moment her hand touched his she had the unpleasant sensation of floating suddenly, and then she found herself staring into her closet door. She hadn't closed it yet from earlier.

"This is somewhere more pleasant?" was the first thought she voiced. "I don't like that you can just pop into my bedroom," was the second. He waved her words away as if they were unimportant, which made Sarah bristle.

"We have business to discuss," he said, sitting down once more on her reading chair. In his formal Goblin King clothes, he looked more regal, somehow—and even more out of place. She wondered if she could ask him to change into normal clothes, just for a second.

"I'm not going back to the labyrinth," she said, crossing her arms. "So whatever it is that you think this scion needs to do, it had better be here on planet Earth." Sarah decided as she said the words that she had had enough adventures for one lifetime, thank you very much, and that she didn't need to go wandering around a magical underground again. Besides that, her abbreviated summer class would be over soon enough, and she was about to come into some valuable free time. She didn't intend to spend it fighting off magical creatures or spinning blades.

"Besides that, I got a really bad fortune just other day. I don't think I should be doing anything reckless." Though she had brushed it off at the time and still thought it was ridiculous, she hoped that the Goblin King would be swayed through this line of reasoning. He was, after all, a being of magic himself. "Lots of swords. Spooky stuff. I'd like to avoid it."

"Pity," he said, flicking off an invisible speck of dust from his front. "Though I would like to speak to this… fortune teller, as I imagine that they have no real skill with the art and have worried you needlessly."

This was, of course, a lie.


	6. Chapter 6

There was, currently, a lot that Sarah Williams was ignoring. For example, she was currently ignoring the fact that she had to clean out the apartment fridge, and that she had laundry to do, and the fact that the final for her summer class was rapidly approaching. But most of all, she was ignoring the fact that she had somehow transported both herself and the Goblin King back to her bedroom—and all of the possible implications of that that other parts of her brain were happily dredging up. She was also very carefully ignoring the fact that she had done it with a wish because, really, that was pushing the edges of even _her_ overactive imagination.

After Sarah had indignantly told him not to disparage the fortune teller she had gone to—why she had defended the woman who was, in all probability, not truly psychic, Sarah didn't know—and made the terrible mistake of describing her and the place where she had done her reading, the Goblin King had smiled. Sarah knew instantly that this did not bode well for her, and there was not a single universe in which it might.

Between the space of one blink to another, she found herself, shoulder to shoulder with the Goblin King, once again in the trailer marked _Lady Dryw's Fortune Telling._ This time, it smelled like mint and overcooked polenta, and the person Sarah assumed was Lady Dryw was wearing pajamas.

"I should have known," she sighed into the pot which sat precariously on top of the trailer's microscopic stove. "And you've knocked down my mint," she added, pointing a polenta-laden spoon in their general direction. Sarah looked down at her feet which were, indeed, trampling a broken pot from which a mint plant had been growing.

"Sorry," Sarah mumbled, just as the Goblin King said, "I appear to have been incorrect." This was something that was happening with an alarming frequency around Sarah, and he had hoped that his new revelations about her had been the end of it. Sarah, for her part, was still trying to collect her scattered thoughts and figure out how she had wound up standing in a fortune teller's pot of mint in the first place. She had a sneaking suspicion that it all lead back to the Goblin King currently posturing beside her.

"I see you've found the other half to your two of cups," the woman said, eyeing Sarah and the Goblin King critically. "My name is Belinda."

 _Like the good witch?_ Sarah thought.

" _Not_ like the good witch," Belinda said, as if reading Sarah's thoughts, just as Sarah realized she got the name completely wrong. Sarah pursed her lips as if she were sucking on lemons and watched at Belinda spooned polenta into a bowl; she shook her head when the woman offered it to her. "At least, I _think_ he's the other half to your two of cups," Belinda eventually said from around the spoon in her mouth. Then she frowned at Jareth.

Jareth, as the Goblin King, was somewhat used to people frowning at him. In fact, there was seldom a time that somebody _wasn't_ frowning at him, but usually he had done something to deserve it. This time, all that he had done was show up rather suddenly, which he thought was rather Sarah's fault. And it was Sarah, after all, who had knocked down the witch's potted plant. He scowled back, in full Goblin King manner.

"But," Belinda continued, "if you want to talk, he's got to go. He's got the stench of corruption on him, and it's putting me off my dinner."

Jareth bristled and ignored Sarah's questioning glance. He also didn't move, and he rather liked the way Sarah crossed her arms and said "but he's the one who wanted to talk to you in the first place!"

Belinda shrugged and popped another spoonful of polenta into her mouth. "Largely irrelevant. I'd like to speak to _you,_ " she said, nodding to Sarah, "but he's got no place here. So either you and I speak, or you both leave me to my dinner and a quiet evening alone. I don't really mind one way or another."

Sarah heaved a sigh, uncrossed her arms, and unceremoniously shoved the Goblin King towards the door. If she had taken even a moment to consider who—or what, which was more appropriate—she was manhandling, she might not have. But Sarah was still grappling with the fact that everything in front of her was really, truly real, and that it wouldn't simply disappear in a few hours. What she _didn't_ know would give her even more pause, so for the moment, it was better that she didn't know it. Jareth was also trying to get used to being shoved around, though he was starting to think that it was a familial thing; after all, Berwyn and Sarah were the only people to make him do something he did not necessarily want to do.

For different reasons, of course, which is why he went quietly.

As soon as the god-king had vacated her home, Belinda became much more sociable. She crossed her legs on her chair and patted the seat next to her, motioning for Sarah to take it. She did, and waited for Belinda to finish her food.

"Your friend is _very_ out of place here and now," Belinda remarked, shoving her empty bowl away from her. "But I suppose that's to be expected." Sarah didn't try to correct her on the _friend_ count, and wasn't sure what she should say, so she shrugged. It wasn't worth starting another conversation about.

"So, that aside, I have to tell you that I'm not going to be joining you on this quest. I _know_ that the ancient kings always had their magicians—Arthur and Merlin, you know—but I think that this is well beyond my capabilities, so I'm going to have to respectfully decline." She spun a tendril of bright purple hair around her finger and frowned at Sarah. "Even if I _do_ think it would be super cool to have a girl power team. I'm more of a witch than a magician anyway. Anyway, I can't see it being that big of a deal because that's the more traditional route, and you don't seem that traditional anyway."

"What…?" Sarah asked, leaning away from Belinda now. The words coming from the woman's lips were nonsense, as far as she was concerned, and she wanted no part in it. "Okay, look, I don't mean to be rude, of course, but I have no idea what you're talking about. At all."

Belinda sighed and stood so that she could rummage around in a giant trunk that Sarah had somehow not noticed before. While the self-proclaimed witch was busy, Sarah took the moment to examine the rest of the trailer. It was just as crowded as the outside looked, with just as many colors and textures and scents competing for attention as might be expected—which was a lot.

"I didn't really expect you to, but it's still a bit of a disappointment even if it isn't a surprise," Belinda said, holding something out to Sarah. "But I'm sure that you'll figure it out fast enough, even with _him_ hanging around, so you'll probably at least get some use out of this."

Belinda held out what looked to be a red thread to Sarah, who squinted at it. It hung in the air between them, and when Sarah didn't make a move to reach out for it, Belinda huffed. Sarah waited for it to be something other than a red string that only looked to be about two feet in length—not long enough for much, except fixing a small seam. And Sarah wasn't a seamstress.

"This," Belinda intoned seriously, taking Sarah's wrist and wrapping the thread around it loosely, "is for when you have no other choice."

 _This is absolutely nuts,_ Sarah thought to herself as she watched Belinda knot the thread off so that it formed a sort of bracelet around her wrist. _Absolutely insane_. Strangely, the thought didn't bother her as much as it probably should have. Or perhaps not so strange—after all, the Goblin King she had previously relegated to childhood fantasies had made a sudden reappearance in her life, and she had found herself magically transported from her apartment, to her parents' home, back to her apartment, to Belinda the probably-witch's home in the span of one evening. Really, somebody giving her a red thread as if it were the holy grail was probably the sanest thing to happen to her in the last twelve hours or so. Perhaps more.

"Thanks," Sarah said instead of voicing her thoughts. "I think."

"No problem," said Belinda as she eyed Sarah again. "But if you wouldn't mind leaving now… I have to be on the road tomorrow, and I'd like to get an early start to avoid traffic." She pointed towards the door and Sarah found herself moving towards it without much thought.

Sarah found herself standing on the metal step outside of the trailer, with the door slammed shut behind her. The windows were covered, so almost no light illuminated the outside, though the moon and stars tried their best. Even then, she could tell that the Goblin King looked furious.

"That," said Sarah, unsure if he was angry at her or not, "was… I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that."

The Goblin King stood ramrod straight, every inch trembling with barely contained ire. Sarah hoped he had somehow forgotten the way she shoved him out of the trailer, but supposed that was too much to ask for, especially with the way he was staring down his nose at her.

"Did she give you anything?" he asked, voice cold enough to send a chill through her. Sarah tried not to slouch under his gaze.

"Just this," she held up her wrist and looked at the string critically. "And she made a big deal about it, but it's just a string. And then she went on about magicians and a whole lot of other stuff that didn't really seem germane. But what do I know, right?" She asked when Jareth leaned over and inspected the red string around her wrist. He stood and pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation.

"I suppose that if it had to be anybody, fate made sure it was you," he said, his eyes closed. He sounded more mournful than Sarah felt the situation called for. He couldn't help but to think that lugging around a child would have been easier—the child was probably far more likely to follow directions without questioning, which seemed to be Sarah's specialty. And then there was the small problem of the sacrificial nature of being Berwyn's scion, which meant a lot of things, but mostly that at the moment Jareth could see no future in which he and Sarah existed happily on the same plane. That was all he had really allowed himself to hope for earlier, and even that was denied to him.

Sarah scowled at him. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, dear Sarah, that your brother is free of all of the responsibilities I assumed he had. It also means, however, that you are not." He bowed deeply, and Sarah's breath hitched. "My deepest condolences."

"You said something like that before," she said sourly. "But as long as it means you'll be leaving the rest of my family alone, I guess that's all I can really say that I asked for. So now that all of that is… sorted out, I guess, what exactly is it that this scion needs to do? Because I'm already sick of running your labyrinth."

"I doubt that will be necessary again," he said. "Though that certainly would be much easier. No, this time you must do what your forebears failed to do and defeat the great evil sealed behind the Bronze Sun. If you don't, it will soon free itself and wreak havoc on not only my world, but yours as well." He meant for his explanation to sound foreboding, and perhaps scare her a little; if she backed away from it now, then he would have had no other recourse but to attempt it on his own. Should he have won against it without her help at all, he might have regained some of the honor lost in his fight against Berwyn all those years ago—but more importantly, Sarah would not have had to be involved in the whole mess at all. He had hoped that she might be spared the upcoming struggle.

"Well," said Sarah with a sardonic smile, "considering that I once thought you were a 'great evil' not too long ago, this should be a piece of cake. But you're going to have to give me two weeks to finish my class, unless you want to work some weird time magic, or something."

* * *

 **A/N**

It's Thursday, so you know what that means! An update!

Also, thank you so much for all of your very kind and sweet reviews; I know that I normally try to personally reply to each one and that hasn't happened recently. My bad.


	7. Chapter 7

Several thoughts passed through Jareth's mind at the same time. First was his indignation at her description of his _weird time magic_ , the second was amazement that the world was an inch away from falling apart and she wanted to stall for a _whole two weeks_ , and a close third was a strange fondness that he couldn't crush despite himself. Sarah, at least, seemed relatively unchanged despite the years that had passed for her.

Offering to rewrite time for her was probably the best and most logical course of action. If they succeeded in their quest, then she could simply be deposited back at the moment they left so that she could complete her class. If they failed, then they would most likely both be dead and she wouldn't have to worry about it anyway. They could set out now and try their luck at defeating the beast that slept behind the sun-like disk and get it over with. Giving Sarah her two weeks only allowed for the dread beast to grow stronger.

But…

"Do I have your word that at the end of this period you will join me in fulfilling your destiny and vanquishing Berwyn's ancient foe?"

"I promise," said Sarah, holding out her hand. He took it and shook it gingerly.

But giving Sarah this time would allow her fourteen whole days of peace before the tempest bore down on both of their heads. She would have fourteen whole days before they put their probable deaths into motion.

"Then we have an agreement," the Goblin King said.

* * *

When Sarah had asked for two week's reprieve before she dove headfirst into another magical adventure, the end result was not exactly what she had in mind. Not for the first time, she thought that next time—if there was a next time—she made a deal with the Goblin King, she ought to get it in writing, triple-checked by the best lawyers she could find, and then signed. Perhaps in blood, as that seemed appropriate.

Though the class she was in didn't really have that much homework, the final was a group project that required frequent meetings so that they could get everything together and make their presentation. Luckily, Sarah had worked ahead and gotten her part done well before the actual due date; all that she really had to do now was sit back and wait for her groupmates to finish theirs. Unfortunately, she still had to go to meetings and provide input. Even worse was that the meetings were held, generally, in the school's library workrooms. Normally this would not have been a problem; under normal circumstances, Sarah enjoyed the library.

These were not normal circumstances. She _knew_ they were not normal circumstances a day into the whole affair, when the Goblin King wandered into their private library room and invited himself to sit next to her. The whole thing had only gotten worse from there; when one group member expressed frustration with the professor and the class as a whole, Jareth kindly suggested that they all stage a violent coup and offered to acquaint them with a few people he assured could help. One of her groupmates had begged her to leave her boyfriend at home, next time, and Sarah told them that she really wished she could. She hadn't bothered to expand upon her remark, and her classmate didn't feel confident enough to ask about it.

Sarah also learned another horrifying truth: where the Goblin King went, his goblins followed. Only some of them seemed capable of taking orders, at least from her. Efforts to keep them from wreaking havoc in her apartment went largely in vain, so Sarah tried to offer a compromise; they could trash her room as long as they left the rest of the apartment alone. That was also fruitless, mostly because the goblins could at least tell that they were being offered a smaller space to explore. Sarah convinced Alyssa that Jareth had a truly ill-behaved cat that he brought over sometimes, and the issue was dropped, for the most part.

What Sarah drew the line at was the goblins escorting her about her daily life whenever the Goblin King himself couldn't. They made grocery shopping absolute hell, and Sarah was downright terrified to fill her car up with gas while they were around. She took to calling them "little beasts," and learned that they hated smooth jazz.

"Their purpose is simple, Sarah," the Goblin King said after Sarah cornered him. The goblins had somehow managed to get into her makeup bin—which she was sure she had _locked_ that morning—and smeared lipsticks and foundation all over her bedroom walls. "When I cannot be with you, they are there to both protect you and make sure that you don't get any ideas of running away."

Sarah burrowed her face in her hands and groaned loudly; Alyssa would be at her job and out of the apartment all night, so Sarah and the Goblin King sat at the tiny eat-in kitchen table with a delivery pizza between them.

"Oh, my God," she said, ignoring the crash in the background which meant that a goblin had knocked over the CD tower _again_. "Then there's no reason for them to be here right _now_ , is there?" She asked, glaring at the king from between her fingers.

"As you wish," the Goblin King said, snapping his fingers. The goblins disappeared and, judging by the noises coming from behind her, the CD tower righted itself. Sarah wondered, for a second, how many times the Goblin King had watched her videotape copy of The Princess Bride while she wasn't around.

"And I can't believe I'm saying this at all, but I think that for my sanity and Alyssa's too, probably, I'm going to have to either ask you to stop being a control freak—which I doubt is going to happen—or make sure that you can be here so that the goblins have no need to be. _And_ ," she said, holding up a finger just as he took in a breath to speak, "if you say 'as you wish,' then I will have no other choice but to hit you, Goblin King. Hard."

"You wound me, Sarah," he said with a smirk as she groaned again. "And furthermore, I insist that you call me by name while we are together; 'Goblin King,' sounds too formal to be coming out of your mouth. You yourself said that it was growing bothersome to throw about one of my titles."

"I changed my mind," Sarah grunted. "But fine. If you promise not to be too annoying—what _I_ would consider annoying—then I'll use your name." It felt a little too Rumpelstiltskin-adjacent for her to be comfortable, but at least she didn't have to guess the name and there was no baby up for grabs. This time.

"Perfect," said Jareth as he clapped his hands together. The sound was somewhat muffled from his gloves; when not around others, like Sarah's classmates or Alyssa, he reverted back to what Sarah had started to call his traditional Goblin King gear, too-tight pants and all. _Wonder how he can even walk around in them,_ she thought idly, before catching her own thought and squashing it with a speed and vehemence usually reserved for… other things. She felt a faint blush spread across her face.

That evening she made him sleep on the floor, though she took enough pity to throw him a few extra pillows and blankets. Personally, she thought bunking together in the same room was going just a touch too far, but it wasn't as if she was actually going to share her bed—and it was still leagues better than waking up to find an actual _goblin_ sleeping at her head.

When she woke, he had somehow conjured himself not only a bed but space in her room in which to place it. Sarah sat up, stared at it, and then decided she didn't care, really, and it was too early anyway to contemplate how many laws of physics he had just broken. Instead, she brewed coffee in the apartment's tiny pot and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. By the time she was pouring creamer into her coffee and spreading peanut butter on her toast, Jareth was stalking out of her bedroom.

It hit her, suddenly, how strange the picture was. He was dressed, thankfully, but looked for all the world like some one night stand she hadn't quite managed to get rid of yet. His hair was even still tousled—she wondered if he would have to use her shower or not, or if magical creatures didn't get dirty. Thankfully Alyssa was still asleep, as Sarah hadn't technically cleared having anybody over with her, and Sarah didn't particularly relish having to explain why, exactly, her "boyfriend" needed to spend the next few nights with them. Sarah felt uncomfortable enough just thinking of him as a romantic relation; she didn't feel the need to add thoughts of a physical relationship to anybody's head. Let alone hers.

"Coffee?" she asked, pointing towards the pot. "You can have whatever is in the kitchen for breakfast, so long as you clean up. I am going to take a shower."

And then the flounced out of the tiny kitchen before they had to stand too close. Jareth quirked an eyebrow at her departure and then turned to sniff at the coffee.

Sarah emerged twenty minutes later with half-dried hair and smelling of coconuts. She quickly cleaned up her things from breakfast and hurried Jareth out of the kitchen and towards the door; she dragged them both to her job at the library, where she sat behind the front desk and tried not to watch Jareth out of the corner of her eye too much. He was behaving perfectly well, which she found deeply suspicious.

"So," she finally said as the fourth hour ticked by. "Explain this whole magic thing to me. Mine, I mean. Since it seems that I have it."

Jareth snorted and placed a thick book back on the shelf exactly where he found it. "I would say we are well past the point of you _seeming_ like you have magic. Really, Sarah." She shot him a withering glance and wondered if she could get away with throwing a pen at his face.

"I imagine that it works exactly the way you expect it to. Not the universal _you_ , of course, but specifically _you_. I wouldn't be surprised if you accidentally put limits on your own powers, either." He leaned on her desk and knitted his fingers together so that he could rest his chin on them. "It is fascinating, really, how it seems to work through wishes for you."

Which, if she let herself think about it, really put that first fateful wish into frightening context. Sarah recognized that fact, but didn't let herself dwell on it, at least not too much.

"And I take it that yours works through those… crystal bubble things you're always waving around?" Sarah asked.

"Apples and oranges, dearest," Jareth said, materializing one in the palm of his hand. "We derive our gifts from different sources, and while we may both be bound, it is by different people." He narrowed his eyes as he looked into the crystal, as if it offered him an unpleasant vision. Then he raised his gaze to Sarah, who found a shiver creeping up her spine.

"Berwyn," said Sarah. It was not a question; she could figure out enough to know that whoever Berwyn was, he and Jareth had _not_ gotten along, and was most likely the root of a lot of the Goblin King's troubles. And possibly hers as well.

Jareth turned his attention back to the crystal in his hand without giving her a reply. The frown that was etched across his face spoke enough for the both of them.

The rest of the time passed quickly.


	8. Chapter 8

Two weeks was more than enough time for Sarah to become more familiar with the Goblin King than she had ever really wanted to be. Somehow, he had faded from fairytale villain of her later childhood into something more… friendly. Something a little closer to the ill-advised crush a person might develop on somebody totally unattainable.

Not by any means best friends, even though he knew exactly how she took her coffee and she knew that he hated to rise early. It was a weird sort of complacency to settle at, but Sarah found that she liked it much better than whatever antagonistic thing they had before.

Sarah's group passed their final presentation, thanks in absolutely no part to Jareth. He had proved to be more of a distraction than Sarah had initially thought possible for one being to be; it was a good thing that Sarah hadn't hoped to foster any new friendships among her classmates because as soon as their last class finished, they fled the room and her as well. Sarah huffed to herself and left the classroom, where she found the Goblin King leaning against the wall, her back to her, speaking to another student.

The other student giggled something like Sarah had not too long ago, though she doubted it was from the nerves that Sarah had felt. Some part of her bristled with irritation and jealousy. They were not, despite what Alyssa and a large part of the school thought, actually dating. Sarah herself recognized how ridiculous the thought was, and yet…

"Excuse me," Sarah said, slipping her arm around his. "I'm done with the final." She offered a small, sharp smile to the girl Jareth had been talking to, trying to warn her away for a multitude of reasons; only one of them was the fact that he wasn't human.

Jareth blinked down at her and then smiled beatifically. A thousand cheesy thoughts burst into Sarah's mind all at once—his smile was like the sun peeking through the clouds, like a drink of cool water, like lightning—so she frowned at him. He said goodbye to the person he had been talking to as Sarah sedately walked them down the hallways and out of the building.

"I thought you'd want to get to monster slaying as fast as possible," she said, nodding to people from other classes that Jareth hadn't terrorized.

"Correct as always, Sarah," he said, squeezing her arm. She shot him a glance, wondering if he was making fun of her. "I suppose it is time to get this whole unpleasant business started. Before we go, is there anything you need from your home?"

Sarah _had_ thought about packing supplies, and then decided that was ridiculous; she was travelling into a magical world with a magical creature. Surely, if she needed a change of clothes, or tampons, or anything so mundane, they could make it work. Besides, getting through the labyrinth had been difficult enough the first time. She didn't want to try it again with a huge backpack.

"No," said Sarah, wondering if she should call home before she left. But she knew that if she did that, it would only be harder to go; better to just rip off the Band-Aid as her mother always said. Besides, they weren't expecting her back for a week or two, so they wouldn't necessarily notice if she was gone for a little while. Sarah had already told Alyssa that she was leaving early, so nobody should miss her.

Not for too long, anyway.

They ducked around a corner into a side hallway that was hardly ever used. If other students were in the building, then they were taking their exams or wasting time near the café, clear across the other side of the building.

"Let's do this thing," said Sarah, trying to sound more confident than she felt as she grabbed Jareth's hand. She closed her eyes to allay the vertigo she knew would happen, and when she opened them they were standing in what she could only describe as a throne room.

It looked somewhat similar to the room she had breezed through the last time she was in the castle beyond the goblin city and told her friends that she had to have the next adventure alone, but… this room was different. While before it had looked like the wilds were trying to reclaim it, somehow, that had changed. It was made up of flat white stone, with delicate tapestries hanging off the wall. One of the tapestries depicted a large blonde man wielding a sword high above his head with the sun at his feet. Wild animals decorated the border.

Truly, it was a terrible thing to look at.

The throne was made of pale wood and inlaid with metals that made it shimmer in the sunlight, as it sat in front of wide windows. It was also elevated so that anybody standing in front of it would have to stare up at the person sitting in it; Sarah could imagine the man in the tapestry sneering down at her from it. It seemed like he belonged there.

"I thought you said that we had a great evil to vanquish," said Sarah, still inspecting the room. She could barely believe that it was the same place she had seen before, but there was the depression in the floor, and over there was a small collection of goblins, and through that hallway would be the room in which gravity seemed to have taken a holiday. It was the same room, she decided. Most likely.

"We do," he said simply, following her gaze around the room. "But first, as with all quests, there is something of a roadblock. You are, of course, the scion of the house of Berwyn, but you must first be formally recognized as such."

"That," Sarah said, trying to not sound too accusatory. "Sounds like a load of bull." Jareth looked at her as if he was trying to figure out how to respond to her. He settled on raising a single eyebrow.

"Be that as it may, it is still something that is required of you. Not by me, you understand; you may place the blame for this squarely on your forebear, precious."

"I bet," she muttered darkly, crossing her arms. "So tell me what it is that I have to do, so I can get this over with."

Her bravado struck him as both foolhardy and brave at the same time, which, he supposed upon further reflection, summed up Sarah as a whole rather well.

"Simple, Sarah. You must go and retrieve Berwyn's crown so that you can fully claim your title."

"Cool," Sarah groused, feeling like it wasn't going to be as simple as Jareth said it would be. Nothing ever was, really, which was a shame. "And I suppose you have an idea of where this crown is, and I won't just have to wander about looking for it?"

"Of course," he replied coolly, taking her elbow and gently leading her to the other side of the throne room and a staircase that she hadn't seen before. "There is something of a necropolis under the castle; that is where the crown is. You will have to make your way through it to reclaim the crown, of course, but that should be no trouble for the champion of the labyrinth and Berwyn's untitled scion."

Sarah couldn't tell if he was making fun or her or not, but decided to keep quiet as he led her down the circular stairs, just in case. Together they went down a few flights—Sarah counted five by the closed doors they passed—and she was glad that they didn't have to ascend them to make it to the necropolis. She shuddered every time she thought the word.

"Here we are," Jareth said, depositing her in front of a massive wooden door. It looked ancient and splintery, so Sarah didn't reach out to touch it. Instead, as she felt Jareth withdrawing from her, she reached out and grabbed his gloved hand.

"Wait," she said, tightening her grip. He didn't move to pull away again or shake her off. "Can you come with me? Just… Just in case." She had denied the help offered to her six years ago because it felt right; she felt like it was something that she had to do without the help of Hoggle, Didymus, and Ludo. But this whole situation felt wrong; this wasn't trouble that she had gotten herself into, this was trouble that had come to find her. It was utterly unfair.

He shifted so that she could see him again, and the dim light from the braziers cast his face in shadows.

"I will not be able to help you," he said slowly, "but I believe I can accompany you."

Sarah squeezed his hand in thanks, and didn't think she imagined him squeezing her hand back.

* * *

The necropolis wasn't as bad as Sarah had let herself think. Yes, it was dusty and musty and carved entirely out of stone, which made Sarah question the structural integrity of the castle that sat upon it, but once she wished for a light, it wasn't too spooky. And she hadn't even seen a single skeleton, which she counted as a definite good thing. In fact, it seemed a little less like "spooky city of the dead" and a little more like an Indiana Jones movie set, except without all of the booby-traps. Sarah sort of wanted a bullwhip.

The only thing she didn't like was that it seemed to be set up on an endless grid pattern, so it was almost impossible to get lost, and yet she felt like they were making no real headway. Any time she tried to ask Jareth about it, she was met with his stony silence. True to his word, he did nothing but follow her around. It got to be almost unnerving, but his presence was still a bit of a comfort.

The darkness surrounding both of them would have almost been overwhelming, but as one light died, Sarah just wished for another one under her breath. It looked a little bit like a will-o-the-wisp; it was a pale blue in color and bobbed over her head as she walked down the pathways of the silent necropolis. She didn't know why they appeared the way she did because her wish was unspecific. When they got out of it, she thought it would be a good question for Jareth.

But because her focus was on putting everything she wanted to do later into order, she didn't notice that some of the flagstones making up the floor looked a little more worn than others. Sarah's left foot crashed through the worn tile and sent her teetering over sideways; she flung her arm out, grabbed a fistful of billowy Goblin King shirt, and dragged them both down to the floor.

Her will-o-the-wisp light died at the same time, stranding them both in total darkness. Based on how her foot was dangling, there was another chamber below them. The idea that the entire floor might cave in and send her crashing into the floor below had Sarah scrambling back up to her feet. Jareth, who had stood almost as quickly as Sarah had dragged him down, stood to the side with his arms crossed. Sarah knew better than to grouse at him for not helping; he had made it perfectly clear that this journey was meant to be hers alone.

Which was fair enough, she supposed, especially because she could tell that he was concerned over something, at the very least. Her light flickered slowly back into life, illuminating his face. She wondered if he was worried over her or worried about the fact that she'd probably stretched out his shirt.

"My foot hurts," she complained.

"I can imagine," Jareth replied.

Sarah tried not to huff as she went further into the dark, followed by a mostly silent Goblin King. She couldn't quite shake the feeling that something should happen; wandering through ancient catacombs was spooky enough, she supposed, but as far as trials went she didn't think it was all that difficult—not that she'd voice the thought. Sarah knew where that would get her.

The main problem was that she was currently stuck in a maze searching for a crown she hoped actually existed. It probably did, but Sarah still felt like it was a massive waste of time. She and Jareth had already established that she could use magic, even if she didn't really understand it. What did it matter if she was legitimately recognized by some old pile of bones or not? And the way Jareth spoke about Berwyn didn't exactly inspire confidence in Sarah. He seemed a bit pompous.

They came across another spiral staircase, which did not look as sturdy as Sarah would have preferred. In fact, it looked a little more like a pile of rocky rubble that just happened to form stairs to descend upon.

"This looks promising," she muttered under her breath. Her light bobbed above her head and she felt Jareth at her back. He seemed more concerned about this whole ordeal than she did, which made her wonder why he even bothered to tag along.

At the bottom of the stairs was a large, long room. It was mostly bare, save for huge paintings on the walls which seemed to tell a story. Sarah walked along them, letting her light show her the figures drawn on the walls.

There was an army and a huge forest. And a fire. A wide swath of the wall was covered with artistically rendered flames consuming the forest as people set upon it with weapons. It was a full scale battle, and not one Sarah thought she had ever heard of before.

The last images on the wall showed a man emerging from the forest and conferring with another man wearing a crown. The crowned man—Sarah supposed he was meant to be Berwyn—followed the other man into the forest.

And then there was nothing more. There was an empty panel beside it, which made Sarah wonder why nobody had ever come to complete it.

"Is this you?" Sarah asked, tapping the wall below a figure. When Jareth was silent, she turned around to find him staring at the image, a pained expression on his face. After a moment, he nodded.

"And this is Berwyn," she said, pointing to the other. She didn't bother to look behind her to see his reaction; it was obvious enough. The king was painted as the victor, but Sarah doubted how truly victorious he really was. After all, she hadn't been able to find anything on him—he might as well have not existed—and it was Jareth standing behind her, not him. She tore her eyes away from the paintings and looked at the door barring their way into the next room.

It looked like it might once have been expensive. It was huge, and stone, and carved into the likeness of the sun. When Sarah placed her hand against it, it was even warm, as if warmed from the inside.

"Open sesame," she said, and watched as the door did nothing. It had been meant as a joke, which was just as well.

"I wish," Sarah pronounced, "that this door would open." It seemed to shudder once, but otherwise remained solidly shut. Sarah growled and clenched her jaw, accidentally getting her lower lip stuck between her teeth. Her hand was at her lips before she even thought about it, and in the pale light from her wish, she could see that her fingertip was bloodied just the slightest bit.

"Now I'm angry," she said as Jareth shifted behind her. "And I feel silly saying this, but I, Sarah Williams, scion of the house of Berywn, command you to open."

And then she placed her hands on the door, shoving it a little. The door grew hot under her fingertips and gave way, sliding into the wall so that her way was unimpeded. Sarah gasped as she took in the sight of the room in front of her; it looked like it was a treasure room, but Sarah had never actually thought that they ever really existed.

The floor was littered with gold and jewels, expensive looking fabrics spilled out of chests, and at the very end of the room sat a skeleton on a jeweled throne. Upon the skeleton's brow was a circlet.

"Mine," Sarah whispered.

* * *

 **A/N**

Bonus chapter for funsies. See you again tomorrow!


	9. Chapter 9

Sarah ignored the treasures around her and made a beeline for the throne and the crown. The fact that the crown was resting on a desiccated corpse hadn't quite hit her yet; once she got close enough to it, she stopped short.

What she had once seen as a skeleton she now saw was a little more than that. Ancient skin—closer to leather—covered what little muscles hadn't been worn away by time. It looked like it would crumble away if Sarah touched it.

Sarah did not want to touch it.

"Eugh," she said, pointing to the husk of a corpse. "Do I really need to get it off of _that?_ " The thing was very dead and unlikely to move, but like most people, Sarah was happiest when not around corpses.

Jareth nodded, once, a tense movement that made Sarah more anxious than she had been before. He didn't like being in the room. There weren't too many places within his realm that he was unfamiliar with, even when it was altered by Berwyn's touch; this was one of those places. He had no control here, and even worse, neither did Sarah. Something deeply _other_ held it in its power, something that he doubted cared much whether or not Sarah passed her trial.

With a grimace, Sarah stepped up to the throne and gingerly touched the golden circlet on the desiccated corpse's head. It wasn't particularly ornate; the wire and glass bead crown she had made as a child to act out the stories in the red book seemed more elegant, somehow. The circlet had become dull with age and didn't even contain any jewels, which Sarah thought was a shame. If she was going to have to pry it off somebody else's skull, she would have thought it would at least have been pretty. Instead, it sat cool and boring in her hands. The room was quiet and anticlimactic.

Until, of course, the corpse shifted; then Sarah shrieked and stumbled backwards into Jareth, who was also rather started and clamped his hands on her shoulders to keep them both steady.

"I believe we should leave, Sarah," Jareth said as the corpse stood, defying everything Sarah knew about human anatomy and mechanics. "Now."

"Yup," said Sarah, glancing to the side. "Total agreement, but I think that those guys have other plans." She pointed behind the throne and into the shadowy depths behind it.

Sarah was regretting comparing the necropolis to an Indiana Jones movie set. And, upon second thought, even allowing herself to think that somehow things were almost too easy. Thing were never easy, especially not when Sarah and magic mixed. Or maybe just when Sarah and Jareth mixed; she was still making up her mind.

The corpses—Sarah was putting significant effort into not thinking of them as zombies—moved almost silently and fluidly, with more grace than Sarah herself could manage on any given day. Most of them were dressed in what might once have been rich fabrics and expensive furs. Some looked older than others; clearly, they were not necessarily all from the same time period. None of them looked even remotely modern. On a few of them she could see a coat of arms that featured a blazing, golden sun on a field of deep purple with a maroon bar at the top.

"Your family, I believe," the Goblin King said drily as Sarah reached behind her and grabbed his arm. She resisted the urge to also stamp on the inside arch of his foot because she was too busy trying to haul the both of them backwards and towards the door.

But the corpses weren't really moving at all, and Sarah's fight or flight instincts were quarreling for dominance. Sarah took a deep breath and did the only thing she could think of to do; she just hoped that it would work.

"I'm here now," Sarah said, trying to remember how her speech class professor taught her how to project. "You can… go back to sleep. I'm claiming the title of scion of this family. I suppose this is, um… mine, now."

There was a terrible moment of silence in which Sarah held her breath and Jareth wondered that the consequences would be if he spirited them out of the treasure room. He would never admit it to anybody, least of all Sarah, but he could hear his own heart pounding in his ears. These were not normal corpses; these were guardians, meant to protect the bloodline from any interlopers. There had not been any attempts to claim the title in a long, long time. There was also a possibility that despite Jareth's own surety of Sarah's status as the scion, those who had passed before might not recognize her as such. It was a tricky, tricky game, and might have been easier with Toby despite his age.

After all, these were not just any creatures of the undead; they were constructs which were able to house what remained of previous scions. A deep, dark magic had tied them to their old bones, and trapping consciousness within decaying matter tended to end poorly. Even before his entrapment, Jareth was aware of the myths that had sprung up of dead creatures returning to life only to slaughter everything around them. They went by many different names, but were ultimately caused by similar things. What remained over the years had withered away to almost nothing, which he imagined had to severely impair their decision making capabilities.

Dozens of knees bent at the same time as the skeletons went down on one knee and threw an arm across their chests in a symbol of loyalty. Sarah sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it—the air was rank and laced with the charnel scent to be expected of a tomb. Then they clattered to the ground, the magic that held them together fizzling out. Their job was done.

Sarah's heart, which had taken up residence in her mouth, returned to her chest. She let Jareth's arm go out of relief, but he kept his hands firmly clamped on her shoulder. The corpse that Sarah had plucked the circlet off of was still standing.

It wasn't Berwyn. It couldn't be Berwyn—Jareth had made sure that there was nothing to bury.

But it could have been Berwyn's son, the one Jareth himself had killed. Of course the king would have laid him out to be surrounded by treasures. Of course the king would have surrounded him with the history of his father. Of _course_ the king would have made sure that should anybody else try to claim the title, they had to pass through his favorite child.

And now the son, whose name Jareth never learned, was here to witness the newest head of the family claim her power in the company of the very being which had ruined it all. All of Jareth's fear was centered heavily on Sarah; he had none for himself.

"Sarah," Jareth said, voice low, "you need to run." He tried to guide her back towards the doors that they had come through not too long ago. She didn't protest, but she did shake his hands off so that she could grab one as she made her way back to the mural room. Together they dashed through the room and back up the uneven stairs with the sound of bony feet pursuing them.

Sarah was willing to call this one a zombie.

"You didn't say anything about _this_ happening," she accused Jareth without looking behind her. Sarah was a little irritated that her breath was already coming hard, but that irritation was lost in the waves of fear that threatened to overwhelm her. In her first run of the labyrinth, she had faced things down that seemed scary at the time, but were really not as bad as they could have been. The Cleaner was dangerous, but there was also a convenient hole in the wall and somebody to help her. Even the creatures in the forest after she'd gotten separated from Ludo could have caused a great deal of harm, but Hoggle had managed to once against save her.

Here and now, as she and Jareth raced back to the first level of the necropolis, there would be nobody else to save her. Jareth had sworn against it because this was meant to be a test to prove herself; she didn't know that at that moment, he was wondering if she had been recognized _enough_ so that he could at least make an attempt at rescuing the both of them. At the end of her run through the labyrinth, she had saved not only herself but Toby as well. She could do it again.

"I did not imagine _he_ would be here," Jareth said, not sounding as out of breath as Sarah did.

"Another old friend?" She asked as she ducked around a sharp corner. Jareth didn't reply. The shuffling footfalls of the corpse grew louder as it grew closer to them, and Sarah crouched down further into the shadows. The stench of decay followed it as it passed, and Sarah and Jareth both were more than a little alarmed to see it clutching a dagger as it passed. It looked decorative to Sarah, who didn't know that much about weaponry, because it was covered in gold leaf and had jewels inlaid on the hilt. It definitely came from the treasure room, but it also looked like it might be able to do some damage.

Sarah still held the circlet in her hand, and she clutched it hard enough to make her knuckles go white. She brushed all of the corpse dust off of it and placed it on her head, still crouched in the dark. It was more of an idle decision born from her not wanting to hold onto it any more than any desire to actually wear the thing.

"This wouldn't happen to be the great evil, would it?" Sarah asked, turning to face Jareth in the darkness; her light had died somewhere in the treasure room and she hadn't renewed it for fear that the walking corpse would find them easier. She tried not to let the fact that he looked nowhere near as self-assured as normal bother her.

"Of course not," he spat out. He was irritated at himself that he sounded so angry, but he _was_ angry—just not at Sarah. He was angry at the situation that kept him unable to do anything, and he was somehow angrier with Berwyn than ever before for imposing such a ridiculous rule on his descendants. But mostly, he hated the way fear played across Sarah's face, and he especially hated the way she tried to hide it every time she looked at him.

"Fine, then," Sarah said, and poked her head out of the narrow corridor she had hidden them both in. The creature sounded—and smelled—like it was coming back. Being a somewhat normal human being, Sarah had never before had the occasion to smell anything dead. She now felt like that situation had changed.

 _Think, Sarah,_ she told herself. She had nothing at her disposal except wishes, and something told her that she couldn't simply wish this particular problem away. And it wasn't as if she would wish for a weapon, either; they didn't exactly teach swordplay in American public high schools, so her curriculum was sorely lacking in that area. She was, however, pretty good at volleyball.

Jareth tugged her further away from the creature, and they ducked around another corner. Without a light it was more difficult to walk than ever, and the weight of the circlet bore down heavy on her head. Funny, for such a small thing, she would have thought it was lighter.

"We can't let him loose down here," Jareth hissed to her in the darkness, and she could feel his hand tighten on hers in the total darkness.

"Berwyn?" she asked. She could feel his hair on the side of her face as he shook his head. From somewhere to their right, the creature roared again. They hadn't lost it, and Sarah had the distinctly unpleasant feeling of being hunted.

 _Think, Sarah!_

She scoured her mind and came up with nothing, except…

Life had, it seemed to her now, tried over and over and over again to drill one single lesson into her: words are important. They were how she charmed her way through the labyrinth and won Toby back, they were how she worked her magic, and they were also how she thought she would get herself—and Jareth—out of the situation they found themselves in.

"I wish I had a light," Sarah whispered into the dark.

The area above her head exploded into bright, warm light, illuminating her as she stepped out from around the corner. At the end of the corridor, the corpse creature stilled. When it caught sight of Sarah and her light, it let loose a raspy, shrill roar that made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. There was anger in that noise. Anger and death.

It surged towards her as Jareth closed his eyes and reached out towards the woman with his magic, rules be damned.

"Go to sleep," she told the creature, halting Jareth's spell. "Your time is done. I command it."

The magic holding the undead construct together released—Sarah felt it go with an almost physical snap.

* * *

 **A/N**

The real update for the week! And probably about as close to horror as this story will be touching.


	10. Chapter 10

"That was _foolish_ ," the Goblin King seethed at her as they both stood in the light cast by her latest wish. The creature had crumpled to the floor, dead like it never had been before, and Sarah let out one loud whoop to celebrate her victory. Her heart still pounded in her ears, but it was no match to the way Jareth's had thundered as he watched her step out of their hiding place.

"But it worked!" Sarah said, grinning from ear to ear as she held out her arms, illustrating her point. "It worked; I saved us, everything is fine."

"You had no guarantee—of all the things—I could not have stepped in," he finished weakly, stumbling over his own words. Sarah Williams, scion of Berwyn and champion of the labyrinth, introduced him to new experiences every day, it seemed. He chose to ignore that he had been preparing himself to step in all the same, willing to risk the future of their entire mission.

"You…" Sarah paused and puffed out her cheeks, looking sideways so she wouldn't have to meet his gaze. "You were worried about me." Somehow the revelation made her feel weak, like all of her energy had been sapped from her. She even felt guilty, which only surprised her because that guilt was directed towards the Goblin King, of all people. Besides, she thought she had completed her task pretty well, especially considering the curve ball that had been thrown her way. She claimed the crown and her status as the head of her family; now they could both continue on to the real mission.

Jareth did not respond. Instead, he strode off in the direction of the door that would lead them back to the castle. He was a little afraid to speak to Sarah; she had taken risks during her run through the labyrinth, of course, but nothing like this. Even he, the person Sarah herself had set up as her antagonist, would have been kinder than the corpse. Though the threat had been short-lived, Jareth did not think that her disposition towards danger—and her proclivity towards landing herself right in the middle of it—would improve at all. Some part of him had hoped, futilely, that this would have been a wake-up call to her.

Obviously not.

Sarah jogged after him to keep up with his long strides, and she wondered how long it would be before he talked to her again. Not long, she decided; after all, they were going to have to discuss what would come next sooner rather than later. The adrenaline of her victory still rushed through her veins, and she felt ready to take on whatever was next as soon as possible.

The magic that had once come in bursts and sparks was now a torrent, not that she could feel it or otherwise noticed any difference at all—but Jareth could. It was similar to what he had felt when the siblings had been in the same room, when Sarah was making her last mad dash towards Toby before time ran out. It could easily drown the senses or scramble the thoughts of anybody else, and the Goblin King was not wholly unaffected. Worse still, she would now be a beacon for any other creature that had been wronged by and remembered Berwyn.

What was sealed beyond the Bronze Disk was no exception.

Jareth shuddered to think of the trail Berwyn and his family had left—they were not always adept at making friends—and what might even now be awakening now that there was now a new matriarch. If Sarah insisted on taking risky gambles neither one of them would last too long, especially if Sarah insisted on doing everything by herself, the solitary nature of her latest duty notwithstanding. They would have to form an alliance, Jareth was certain. Those who refused to bow to her might bow to him, and that might even be extended to her.

Jareth stewed on these thoughts all the way back up the flights of stairs to the throne room that had once been his. Sarah had managed to keep up with him, though she had started to run out of breath by the fourth floor.

"Sarah," Jareth said, whirling to face her suddenly, catching her off guard. She had once again been trying to imagine what the rest of the castle looked like if the throne room had changed so drastically and there was an expansive necropolis under it. He looked intense and pensive, and maybe a little broody—the exact sort of mixture that both she and Alyssa were weak to.

"What?" Sarah squeaked.

"We have more to discuss," he said, as if testing his words.

"Yeah," she agreed, sliding the circlet off her head. It rested again in her hands, a dull circle of metal. "I mean, yes, we do." His formality was grating on her, especially now that a mask had seemed to slip over his face again. It was strange and left her with no way to read him, which was something she was unaccustomed to after the time they had spent together already.

"Follow me," he said, and in a swirl of fabric he was off again. Sarah rushed to keep up with him, and decided that if this is what her future held—desperately trying to keep up with the Goblin King—neither of them would be happy about it.

He led her on a winding path down straight hallways, through rooms bustling with the activity of goblins, and muttered "quickly, quickly," to her every time she lagged behind. Some of the goblins stopped to stare at her and the circlet she held in her hands. Sarah wondered for a second if she should have changed into something a little fancier—faded jeans and her running shoes probably weren't making the best impression, but then she thought that was probably the least of her worries. The goblins who spotted her ran to spread the word almost as soon as she and Jareth rushed away from them.

Within ten minutes of their return from the necropolis, the entire castle knew that Sarah was back and what her position was; the news would soon spread beyond even that. Jareth knew that they only had a certain amount of time before others would want to see the girl now at the seat of Berwyn's power.

"Here," he said, finding what seemed to be a smallish reading room with only one door leading into it. He ushered Sarah into it and snagged a passing goblin, instructing that they were not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

"I'm a little worried, Jareth," Sarah said once he had shut the door behind him and settled on a chair across from her. He breathed out a frustrated sigh and then met her eyes.

"As you know, things have now been set in motion that cannot be undone." He held up a hand for silence as Sarah opened her mouth to speak. "This goes beyond our shared quest. Others, now with access to this land that they would not have had before, will have felt your power awaken. No doubt they are already on their way to see the new monarch," he bit out.

Sarah shifted uncomfortably, but didn't speak, sensing that Jareth wasn't done speaking yet.

"Not all will be happy to see you return."

"I didn't think so," said Sarah quietly, staring down at her hands. She had agreed to all of this, but there was still a large part of her that wished for a magic wand to magically make it all go away. She doubted it would work that way.

"You need allies."

"Aren't you my ally?" Sarah asked, tilting her head. She felt like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Maybe they weren't _friends_ , but she had thought they might have evolved to something close to it—ally was a good enough word.

"Of course, my dear," he said. "But that will not be enough for some. Berwyn and his forefathers left a legacy that others will fear you wish to resume. You have to show them that you have no desire to see them further destroyed; I would like your permission to aid you in this." He folded his hands together. Sarah didn't have to think long to reach her answer.

"Absolutely," Sarah said. "As long as you think it will help."

This was a situation that Sarah had never in her wildest dreams thought she would have ever found herself in; accepting help from the Goblin King to clean up the mess that somebody else had made for her was so wildly outside of what Sarah considered the realm of possibility that everything was starting to not feel real again.

"Good," he said, leaning back into his chair. "As soon as that is done—perhaps a day or two—we will set off on our journey. I can transport us part of the way there, but after that we will have to walk. There are areas where my magic is… unreliable. It is the nature of the foe we face; the closer we get to it, the more dangerous it will become."

Sarah, to her credit, only frowned a little. Jareth had instilled a sense of urgency in her, so hearing that they would be further delayed—and that they would have to take their time to walk at least part of the way to their destination—was something that rankled her nerves a bit. Mostly, she was a little scared, which was something that she did not want to admit. The red thread Belinda had tied around her wrist reminded Sarah that while the worst was yet to come, she would have help when it did—and from more than one front.

"Can't have a magical adventure without a little danger and a whole lot of walking, I guess," she said.

Jareth pretended that he didn't hear her, mostly because her flippancy towards the situation made him uneasy.

Before either of them could speak again, there was a frantic knocking at the door. Sarah whipped her head towards it, surprised, but Jareth only heaved a deep sigh and stood. His expression hadn't slipped since his panicked outburst in the necropolis, and Sarah was still as bored with it as she expected it to be.

"I asked that we not be disturbed," he said, sounding icy. The goblin at the door shrunk at his tone, and Sarah quirked an eyebrow at his back.

"V-visitors, my lord," the goblin squeaked. "They wish to speak with you and…" Sarah caught the goblin's eyes as they slid to her, and not knowing what else to do she offered it a small wave with her hand. The goblin swallowed hard and looked back up to its king.

"Prepare extra rooms and the gardens and inform them that we will be out soon. Keep them occupied. Under no circumstances are they to wander about the castle; they are to be confined to the gardens only. Do you understand?"

The goblin nodded and scurried off when Jareth flicked his hand. Sarah had always known, in some abstract sort of way, that he was the Goblin King and therefore most likely had kingly duties like bossing people around and doing things other than terrorizing sixteen-year-old girls. But somehow she had never really believed it; Sarah never saw herself as anything other than just a girl trying to get her brother back, and so having a king as an adversary on her level was too confusing. So she simplified it. The result was much more palatable to her when she was sixteen, but was very inaccurate. Sarah could see that now.

"Now," he said, rounding on her once the door was closed again. "You cannot be presented to anybody looking like _that_ , dearest. Stand up, if you will. I'm going to make you look your part." He held out a gloved hand for the circlet.

"Hey! I thought I was just coming down here to vanquish an evil, like you said," she protested, but she handed over the circlet to him anyway.

"My apologies," he murmured, looking her up and down as if seeing something that wasn't there. Sarah fought the urge to cross her arms and pout at him. Just as she was going to ask him what, exactly, he was thinking about, he snapped his fingers.

"There," he said, just as Sarah felt her clothing shift and her hair pull itself up into a style. The sensation made her skin shudder and she closed her eyes, waiting for it to pass.

"I swear, Jareth, if this is some glittering, wedding dress adjacent monstrosity—"

"You chose that one, Sarah," he said, sounding bored. "But I believe this is an improvement overall."

Sarah cracked one eye open and looked at her hands. A gauzy sort of fabric wound its way down her arms and ended at about her knuckles. When she looked down at the rest of herself, she saw that the whole gown was made of the same fabric, fading form a soft ivory color at the top to a shimmering sky blue at the bottom; the effect made it look like sunlight rippling off water. The folds of the intricately draped fabric caught the light in the room and Sarah hummed appreciatively.

"It's pretty," she said, but what she meant was that she felt comfortable in it. Even the golden sandals winding around her feet and lower calves were much better than the bejeweled heels she found herself in during the peach dream.

"Shall we?" he asked, offering her his hand. Sarah looked up to see that he had completely changed as well, and she only felt a little suspicious to see that they were wearing clothing that was very similar, if it did not match.

* * *

 **A/N**

So this is (sort of?) an extra chapter this week. Thursday's update will still happen as planned, but I will be out of town for a week after that. In case I can't get to internet next Thursday, this is a preemptive apology.

And because I also have some questions for you guys, I thought I'd do the ethical thing and bribe you. (lol) How many of you would string me up if the rating on this was changed to M for the, er, romance aspect? If you guys don't like that, please either leave a review or message me. I am perfectly amiable to rewriting the bit I already have because I didn't foresee this either. If more people want it than don't, I'll put a warning in the author's note in the chapter right before that one and bracket that specific part off. Because it's actually sort of plot relevant (?!) I'll also write up a brief summary to put in a note after that chapter if you would like that.


	11. Chapter 11

The shimmer of magic clung to the air still, even by the time Jareth had led Sarah out towards the expansive gardens. They certainly hadn't been there when Sarah ran the labyrinth, or if they had been, she hadn't seen them at all. They were decorated for a large party, and already beings were milling about under the trees. Sarah couldn't confidently call most of them people, as only a few held recognizable human forms; the rest looked like animals or forces of nature, and even some of the ones that _did_ look like people glittered in unnatural hues.

"I thought we were trying to save the world, not throw a party," Sarah hissed from the shadows she and Jareth stood in. Nobody had caught sight of them yet, and they definitely were hiding even though Jareth would never admit it. He still held her hand, and she hadn't made any moves to pull away.

"Gods have different reactions to different things," he said as Sarah's eyes bugged. "You should be familiar with the decadence of Olympus, at least. I have been outside of their realms for far too long, locked away in here, that their curiosity will be deep. And then there is the matter of you. I will handle it."

Sarah sputtered beside him.

"Are you saying…?" She was definitely going to be sick. "Are you…?"

"Yes, to whatever you were about to say," said Jareth, waving away her questions. "It is unimportant at the moment. What _is_ important is that you play along. Gods adore a love story; we are going to give them one. You are not threatening to them, and if you are no threat then they will not stand in your way."

" _Unimportant_ ," Sarah breathed, incredulous. His words hadn't quite caught up to her yet. She was still reeling over how carelessly he threw around information that completely changed her entire world.

"Wait," she said, finally registering his words. "Love story? Because…" she felt her cheeks flush. "Are you sure that will work? I mean…"

"Just act. The sooner they are satisfied about your actions here, the sooner they will leave and we can do what we need to," he said, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. She could feel his heat through the delicate fabric. "I understand that this will be difficult for you, Sarah."

 _Maybe not too difficult,_ she thought, forcing herself to maintain eye contact.

"Fine," she breathed after a moment of consideration. "But I want… answers. After this. _Right_ after this."

Jareth tilted his head forward and led her into the sunlight, where he waited for everybody's attention. As soon as he had it, he began speaking in a language Sarah had never heard of. _Probably_ , she thought _, the language of the gods_. And then she felt deliriously giddy. Her attention snapped back to him when she heard him say her name.

"Sarah Williams," he said, raising her arm with his. "My intended."

Sarah's heart leapt into her throat.

The crowd was silent

The crowd remained silent as Sarah turned to face him, and he let go of her hand so that he could reach around her and pull her closer to him. Their bodies were pressed together and Jareth shielded her face.

He brushed his thumb across her lips with a questioning glance. Sarah took a deep breath and nodded once. His lips were on hers before she had time to double think about it, and she couldn't stifle her gasp. Not knowing what to do with her hands, she reached up and placed them on his shoulders as if she were about to push him away.

It was almost a chaste kiss until he bit gently down on her lower lip.

Jareth pulled her closer and held the back of her head with the hand he had brushed her lips with, and Sarah closed her eyes and curled her fingers into his shirt. Time slowed to an agonizingly slow crawl where Sarah could feel every heartbeat; she tugged him a little bit closer to her. Jareth smiled into their kiss and broke away from her, pivoting just as quickly to face the crowd.

The crowd erupted into noise and Sarah, still stunned, realized they were cheering. Whatever he had said to them in their language, they had bought it. _Sarah_ had been close to buying it, and she was in on the ruse herself.

Like most people with active imaginations, Sarah had imagined kissing other people, sometimes at random. One of those other people happened to include the Goblin King, which she felt was only natural. He was attractive and fit nicely within her own idea of a fantasy bad-boy, mostly because he was unattainable; there had been a significant portion of her life in which she tried to convince herself he wasn't real, after all. But he was real. _Definitely_ real.

And she had just kissed him.

All things considered—and there was a lot to consider, which Sarah promised herself she would do _later_ —it had been pretty great. For now, her lips still buzzed and she could still hear her heart pounding in her ears. But they had people— _Gods!_ Her mind reminded her—to trick and then bore. Now, if only she could get herself to do something other than gape at him…

His arm was still around her, now resting around her waist so that she still stood close to him. One or two of the gods ambled up to the pair and said something to Jareth in the language that they shared. Sarah tried not to stare too much, which meant that she spent more time staring at her sandaled feet than anything else. If any of the other gods spoke English—the only language Sarah knew besides a few halting phrases in Spanish—they didn't deign to speak to her.

Jareth kept his grip on her and made sure that nobody came too close, least of all the gods who looked just the slightest bit malicious. Sarah wondered where they came from, of if she would recognize any from the mythology in her childhood story books. She doubted it; most of them looked wild and fierce, totally untamed by human ideals.

Sarah did her best to smile at them, to be as nonthreatening as she truly felt she was, but she clutched Jareth's hand when he eventually let go of her waist. This was new terrain to her, and him as well, she thought; for all he had said about protecting her, she knew that on some level he was uncomfortable with the press of his kindred.

"Stay here," he muttered to Sarah after they had managed to extract themselves from most of the crowd. Jareth leaned down and kissed her forehead, a show that was likely lost on most of the gods. Once they had learned that Sarah was not going to be doing most of her own talking, they lost interest in her. Before Sarah could protest his leaving, he was gone, off to confer with two or three of the gods who had watched them most critically.

 _Fine_ , Sarah thought. _Let him deal with them._ Being left alone at a garden party full of gods and learning new things about her companion that she hadn't thought even remotely possible before had soured her mood considerably. She'd rather talk herself out of another fight with a corpse in the forgotten necropolis, searing kisses or not.

But it only got worse when two other gods sidled up to where she stood in the shade of a tall tree. Sarah tried to smile at them, but found it more difficult than she thought it possible. Only one of the two looked human. One of them was of nebulous shape and seemed to be formed entirely of light; if Sarah squinted, she might have been able to see through it. The other was a breathtaking young woman wearing fine clothes and dripping with gold and jewels. Her long, dark hair was pulled back and swept around a golden headdress that seemed to serve as more of a nest for some of the many butterflies and birds that followed her.

"Hello," Sarah tried, not knowing how to address the pair. The one surrounded by her butterflies smiled widely, her teeth bright against her dark skin.

"We have heard about you," she said, an accent that Sarah couldn't place thick in her words. "Who would have thought that a lowly forest god locked away for so long could provide such… amusement?" The woman looked her up and down, and Sarah fought the urge to shrink into a ball.

"Though I suppose he's not too much of a god anymore, is he?" The blinding light had a voice, then, and it held a different accent than the woman. As Sarah watched it, it seemed to shudder and ripple until a woman stood in its place. "It might be easier to talk if I look like this," she explained, tossing curly golden hair behind her back.

Sarah nodded haltingly, her words frozen in her throat.

"I don't know your names," Sarah apologized. "This has all been a bit of a… whirl."

The butterfly goddess's smile faltered for a second. "Our romances tend to be." Sarah wondered what made her say that, but then pushed the thought from her mind; she wasn't there to make friends. She was there to fulfil a duty and then to return to her previous life.

"You don't need to know our names," the blonde goddess said, baring her teeth in something clearly not meant to be a smile. "But we know yours, which is what matters. And we know your lineage, little girl."

Sarah almost protested. Almost told the goddess not to call her a little girl. Almost told her that family wasn't everything and to mind her own business. She bit back her words instead. _Be nonthreatening_ , she reminded herself. _You can find Berwyn's grave later and spit on it for all he's done, but for now… play along_. The last two words she thought in Jareth's voice. "Tell me," Sarah said. "Tell me what you know about the past, and I'll… I'll tell you our story." _Gods adore a love story._ Sarah could sell them one.

"Your king-father would be disgusted if he were here, so it's just as well that he's not. Your intended killed his son, you know. That was only after the son slaughtered your intended's people and destroyed his lands. Don't look so horrified," the blonde chided. " _He_ seems to have gotten over it well enough to have fallen in love with you. And after that they traded curses; Berwyn locked a god up in a story, and your intended erased his memory from everything."

"We have heard worse," the butterfly goddess said, shooing a bird away from Sarah's head. "It was tragic, of course, but not the worst."

Sarah's stomach churned as she remembered the murals on the walls in the necropolis and the corpses hidden within the treasure room. The one had to have been Berwyn's son. Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wondering when—if—Jareth was ever going to give her that part of the story, or if he was going to let her guess based off a few paintings in a crypt. There had been so much bloodshed in them. Entire sections had been swathed in red, though she hadn't really paid attention to them at the time.

"Our story," said Sarah, trying to keep her voice steady as she opened her eyes again, "is nothing like that." And she regaled the two goddesses with the events of her journey through the labyrinth, but with slight changes—a stronger sense of duty had propelled her to return home, not fear. She made sure to play up how she had reached out at the last moment for the magic he had offered her, pretended it was from the realization of a star-crossed lover. But when she came to how they were reunited, Sarah was at a loss.

Asking somebody to defeat an ancient evil after threatening her younger brother wasn't terribly romantic, and Sarah doubted that she could make it sound any better than it really was. "He wore me down," she eventually settled on, waving her hand to emphasize how much she couldn't explain it. "And, well…"

The bird and butterfly goddess shrugged, while the blonde stilled and stared at Sarah's wrist. In all the commotion, Sarah had mostly forgotten about the red thread; the goddess's attention reminded her of it, and she pulled at it gently. The blonde returned her attention to Sarah and forced a smile.

"It was a nice story," she said as the other goddess grabbed her arm. "And we're off to spread it around, if you don't mind."

Sarah tried not to make her sigh of relief too audible as she watched them both saunter away. She was left alone again, and nobody else came to speak to her. Perhaps without Jareth beside her she was no longer as interesting as before, especially when two of their kind seemed to have cleared her. Jareth had been gone for what felt like an uncomfortably long time, and part of her wondered if he was off busy getting them both into trouble somehow, despite the fact that he'd promised not to.

Years of being the only child at her father's and Karen's parties had made Sarah particularly adept at blending into the background when she needed to, and that is what she did. It made it easier to listen in on conversations, and Sarah was pleased to know that it worked that way on these beings as well. She waited until she caught something that sounded interesting.

"You can feel it here," said a massive jaguar, which seemed to project its words through means other than a mouth. "It's trying to break free, though how it plans to get out from behind that disk…" The jaguar flicked its tail, which Sarah assumed was akin to a shrug. She remembered a bronze disk from a dream which had also turned out to be at least partly real. It made her shudder to remember it.

"Better his lands than ours," said another being, seemingly made out of a living tree. "Let it consume everything else; we will be safe as long as we keep ours secluded." The being's tone was callous and cold as it continued. "Let it do what it will, and good riddance."

They were talking about the thing that she was here to vanquish; she was sure of it. Sarah was also sure that Jareth had presented it as dire, as life or death, and she was willing to believe it. And these people were planning on turning their backs to let her and letting her entire world suffer the consequences; she doubted that Berwyn had anything to do with it. She walked off to find Jareth before her legs turned to jelly beneath her.

* * *

 **A/N**

Looks like I won't be rewriting that future chapter! Though it is _very_ in keeping with this site's guidelines, so don't over hype it to yourself. ;)

As always, thank you all for your input and reviews!


	12. Chapter 12

Jareth, despite his assurances to Sarah, was afraid. And angry. With nothing to buffer either emotion, he was quickly letting them get the better of him. The gods who had appeared almost the moment that Sarah had unintentionally destroyed the barriers had grown bitter. Insular. Humanity was, to Jareth's surprise and disgust, no longer their concern.

He discovered that they knew what was about to happen, what would happen if he and Sarah were to fail. He also discovered that they were building up their own defenses and that they planned to leave anything else to its fate. Simply, they did not care.

Jareth discovered that he cared—he cared a _lot_. He cared for more than just his territory, which would be the first to go. Sarah's world was also something that concerned him, as it would be the next thing swallowed up as the being behind the Bronze Disk ate its way through what it could. And she would go with it.

That these gods would do nothing surprised him only a little; most had the bad habit of waiting until asked to do anything, but even now they refused his pleas for help. Just having to _ask_ was humbling enough for him. To be refused was another thing entirely.

He was also sorry that he had put Sarah up on show to no avail. These gods didn't care; they were both mere curiosities to them—the god locked away for so long and the lost descendant of the man who did it. As soon as their interest was sated, they would return to their own homes and leave anything else to fend for itself. For perhaps the first time, Jareth had to admit to himself that the world he once knew, the world he once belonged to, was irrevocably gone. He did not have time for mourning.

There was nothing more to be done than what he already intended to do.

"So," Sarah said, sidling up next to him. She had moved so silently that he hadn't even noticed she was there until she spoke. Jareth looked down at the place on his arm where her left hand rested.

"Things didn't go as planned?" She asked, knowing well enough from his stormy expression that they hadn't.

"No," he said, leading her even further away from the crowd. He'd invite them to leave shortly, but some had already left, sensing that that anything of interest had already happened. "It did not."

"They're not going to help," Sarah said, feeling hollow. "I heard some of them talking. Whatever this thing is… They don't care."

Jareth looked down at Sarah again and frowned. "Quite the investigator," he said.

Sarah shrugged.

"I did not anticipate this. Things have… changed, Sarah. I no longer know these people."

Not knowing what else to do, Sarah shrugged again. "This is all very unreal," she said. "And I know that I still don't know everything, but I didn't expect you to find help. You said that this was something that I had to handle, after all. It doesn't make that much of a difference to me."

He wondered if she was lying, and then wondered if he would know if she was lying or not. Jareth walked off closer to the castle they had eschewed for the failed garden party and Sarah followed; as they passed, he nodded at one of the goblins and gestured to the now-unwelcome guests. They were both well away from the party before Sarah tugged his sleeve, pulling him to a stop.

"Explain the god thing," she said gravely, releasing his sleeve. "Because the more I think about it, the harder a time I'm having."

Jareth sighed, rubbed his face once, and then sat cross-legged in the grass in front of Sarah. He patted the ground in front of him, inviting her to sit as well. Frowning a bit at him, she sat.

"'God' is perhaps not the most correct word. Translation is difficult," he said, as Sarah shook her head.

"But that's the one you used," she protested. "And—I mean, I don't want you to take offense to this, but I don't know how else to say it, so… For a long time, you have to understand that I thought you were some sort of… fairytale. And now I'm finding out you've rubbed elbows with Zeus. So, you know… It's a bit disconcerting."

Jareth snorted. "Zeus. As if he would ever deign—no, Sarah. There were some peoples who had it closer to right than you do now. Humans are often very flattering, but also often incorrect." He paused for a moment as if checking to see if he offended her. "Some of us have our roots in… ideas, that were later given form as they were better understood. Like light, or war, or love. Not all of us can rule the heavens or oceans. All of us have our time and must know when to gracefully bow out. Gods, Djinn, Youkai, Tuatha Dé Danann: all different names for very similar creatures."

Sarah hugged her knees, not caring that her skirts were riding up the slightest bit. _Bowing out_ sounded an awful lot like leaving the people that once worshipped them behind. "It sounded like the others had home that they were returning to. Ones not connected to this one. Or mine. And they were just going to…"

"Abandon yours?" He asked. "I believe that is their intention, yes. They are lords of their own lands, and rarely permit entry to others."

Sarah studied his face, searching for any clues she might find about his history. He was almost impassive, but she thought he was working a bit too hard for it.

"And you? This is yours?"

"Berwyn once thought to take it," Jareth said quietly. "But it was reclaimed at great cost. I was sealed up in here, and he was forgotten."

"Yeah," she said, choosing to ignore how she remembered his face when he saw the mural and how he neglected to mention the nature of his godhood. Perhaps allowing her to think of him as the Goblin King for so long had been a kindness. But based on the words she had heard not an hour before, he was diminished, somehow. No longer quite a god, but perhaps something in between. This Sarah could handle much easier.

It meant he wasn't that far away from what she was, after all. Not human, but not quite the _other_ that he had been built up to be, either.

"So," she said, hoping to change the subject entirely; Jareth had become more pensive than she felt comfortable with. It usually meant that he was about to swipe one of her books or pens so that she had to chase after him. "This Bronze Disk. How are we supposed to defeat it?"

"It's not the Disk itself. It's what's behind it."

"Well, then what's behind it?" Now, Sarah felt, was not the time to be irritated with him, even though she was starting to lose her patience just the slightest bit. He still looked too raw for her to want to pick a fight, and the way he stared into space as if he wasn't seeing anything concerned her.

"Nothing," he said, and then did not elaborate.

"Stop being cryptic," snapped Sarah. He quirked his lips into something closer to a smile and fixed his gaze on her. Sarah tried not to stare.

"I am not. It is nothing. It cannot be touched, or smelled, or tasted, or heard."

Sarah had once, to her utter desperation, been dragged along to a lecture in which the speaker discussed physics and mathematics and space, and generally a lot of things that she might have otherwise found interesting if she hadn't also been missing the opening night of the school's spring play. But Jareth's words reminded her a little of one of the half-remembered topics she had meant to look up later but then never did.

"Like dark matter? Stuff that scientists say should be there but can't find," she explained when he didn't answer. "I think, anyway. I'm not an expert. I think that it has gravity, though."

"Then no," answered Jareth. "What is behind the Disk is not your dark matter. It is what is between all matter. It's _nothing_. The Disk just holds it in, keeps it at bay. But nothingness by nature cannot be contained for long."

"Which is where we come in," Sarah finished for him. "I'll take your word on it."

Jareth stood and considered Sarah for a moment before he waved his hand, and she found herself back in the clothes she had originally been wearing. The fact that he could change her wardrobe at will didn't quite sit well will her, but she decided against protesting too much.

"It was pretty," was all she said as she tugged on the hem of her shirt.

Jareth agreed, which was part of the problem. Sarah in her normal clothes was a Sarah that he could handle—Sarah dressed as a goddess was one he could not. Sarah with a _crown_ on her head—even if was simple and unadorned—spoke to things he had never really considered in himself. But Sarah _was_ a queen, especially now. And Jareth… Well, he supposed he had fallen to the status of a king as well.

"So how exactly do we take care of this… nothingness?" Sarah, he was reminded, was ignorant. In this case, it was not necessarily a bad thing to be; he had hoped, for a while, to keep her ignorant. She was not as bad as her predecessors, and with the exception of remaking his lands into the image Berwyn had pressed into them when she left, she hadn't really done anything to him herself. In this, he was likely to agree with Sarah: it wasn't fair.

"It requires a sacrifice," Jareth said quietly.

Sarah took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It could only mean one thing, really; he had talked before about how dangerous it was, but hadn't mentioned this vital piece of information. Something that felt close to betrayal curled itself up in her chest.

"Which is why, Sarah, none of your forebears had the fortitude to take care of it when they had a chance." He meant it as both an apology and a compliment.

"Stop talking," Sarah breathed.

She was willing to take neither; the result of her having the fortitude he spoke of was not a happy thing. A sacrifice would be required of her. Sarah was going to be the one bearing the fault of her ancestors, no matter that she had never even heard of them before. And she couldn't even blame herself, which rankled; she messed up in wishing Toby away, but it ended up alright. She fixed her own mistakes.

That was not what was happening now.

"Sarah," said Jareth as he reached out to her. She could back out now, he decided, and he would not hold it against her. He had lied to her about the purpose of the goblins following her—once he knew that it was _her,_ that _she_ was the scion, there was no way he could have forced her into anything. There was every possibility that he could do what he could, and it might just stop at his borders. If it escaped, Sarah wouldn't even know before her world was swallowed up—and he himself would be long gone. If it came down to it, he might gladly sacrifice everything he had for her.

"No," she ground out. "Just… give me a little bit of time. I'll still… I'll still do this. But give me tonight. The day is already half gone, and I don't think anything will mind if we delay for half of a day." And without waiting for him to reply, Sarah left. They were not all that far from where they had left the castle, so she found her way back by herself. A goblin showed her to one of the rooms that had been prepared in anticipation of help that wasn't coming.

Jareth let her go. He asked that food be brought to her and then retired to his own quarters.

She hadn't given up, and he wouldn't try to talk her out of it again. It hadn't worked before, and it was even less likely to work now. She knew everything. There were no more surprises in store; she was entering with all of the knowledge that he had. But he wasn't turning back either, and after her speech about their wills being as strong, he really should have suspected this would happen.

That thought didn't stop him from raging in his rooms.

* * *

 **A/N**

This week's update, somehow on time. I think I'm going to sleep for a week.


	13. Chapter 13

Sarah was not changed much the next morning when Jareth saw her next. She had a smile on her face, and her hair was back up in a ponytail. Somehow she had contrived to change her outfit, and since he knew he was not the cause of it, Jareth supposed that she had figured it out herself. Despite how she had stormed off last afternoon, Jareth thought she seemed awfully chipper.

Only her eyes, which were still the slightest bit puffy, spoke to how she spent her evening. He thought to perhaps delay them for a few moments by suggesting breakfast, but she only shook her head.

"I'm not all that hungry right now. Besides," she said, making a quick wish. An apple appeared in her outstretched hand. "I've been practicing. I think I have this figured out. So we're covered, I think." Sarah tossed the apple to Jareth, who caught it and studied it. It seemed perfectly edible, but he wasn't hungry either.

"I'm fine, really," she said after another beat of silence. "Thanks for being worried, but I made up my mind. I'll just figure out a way to do this without the sacrifice. I've beaten the odds before, you know. I know well enough that magic has a price; I'll just figure out how to change that price." She nudged him with her elbow and threw him a playful smile, which he did not return. "So let's be on our way, or as far on our way as we can get."

Jareth was not as optimistic. Sacrifice was the nature of the nothingness behind the Disk, and of the Disk itself; it required a sacrifice to be created, and required one again to be maintained. Others had balked at the requirement, which had placed them both in the situation they were currently in. Though he wished it possible, he thought it unlikely that Sarah would manage to find a way to both quell what rested behind the Disk and save herself.

"Of course," he said, placing a gloved hand on her shoulder. Though the Disk was meant to keep others away, and what was behind it was waking up and therefore sentient enough to also ward people from it, he didn't doubt that they would be able to appear close enough to it to significantly shorten their journey. If he was correct, then they should appear on the plains just outside of its range. He told Sarah as much. Sarah only nodded, and didn't let on if the news made her nervous at all.

Instead of grassy plains, however, when Sarah opened her eyes she was met with nothing but tree trunks.

"Hey," she protested. Jareth grunted lightly, eyebrows furrowed, and tried again. Sarah prepared for the odd floating sensation of magical travel, but nothing else happened.

"I thought you said…"

"I did," he sniffed. "But it appears I was incorrect. Something is impeding our progress." He wondered, briefly, if it was Sarah herself. One look at her was enough to make him doubt that, however. She looked thunderous.

Sarah shook his hand off her shoulder and scowled, but not at him. The forest looked old and living, in the way that the ones back home didn't quite. Sarah liked forests, and nature in general, in a more theoretical sense. She liked the _idea_ of nature, and she liked looking at it and even being in it for shorter periods of time. But being stuck in it for any more than an hour, maybe, didn't make her too happy.

"Well, then, let's get moving at least, so we can say we made it _somewhere_ tonight," Sarah groused, and set of further in the forest. Jareth, bemused, followed a step or two behind, pointing out better-worn paths and the direction she should be heading in when she wandered off course. She only called it quits when her ankle started to twinge again, and she sat down without much ceremony on a fallen log.

"Giving up already?" Jareth asked, preferring to stand. She'd figure out the log she had chosen as her perch was covered in ants soon enough, he decided. And besides, a riled-up Sarah was more entertaining than a tired and irritated one.

"No," Sarah answered, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm just taking a break." She placed both hands down on the log and leaned back.

It didn't take long.

Sarah yelped and scrambled to her feet, rubbing her wrist and looking frantically around her. When she spotted the ants she yelped again and did her best to brush herself off to varying results. Jareth suppressed a smile.

"Something bit me! Look!" Sarah shoved her wrist under his nose. It was small, but an angry red and slightly swollen. At the center were two tiny puncture wounds. This was _exactly_ why she didn't actually like spending time outdoors.

"An ant, I imagine," Jareth said, running a finger over her bite. Sarah winced, pulled her hand away, and pouted in quick succession.

"You knew they were there and let me sit down, didn't you? Jerk." There was no real anger to her words, so Jareth's feeling of contrition didn't last for longer than a moment. Sarah sighed and rubbed her wrist again, wishing under her breath for a bandage. When none magically appeared in her hands, she seemed rather put out—until, of course, she stuck her hands into her pockets and found one there. She tore open the paper packaging and slapped it on her wrist.

"I probably should have cleaned it first," she sighed.

"You will be fine," Jareth said. "But feel free to continue taking your break, by all means."

Sarah rolled her eyes and thoroughly inspected a different broken tree trunk before she perched on it. There were, to her sudden realization, a surprising number of felled trees around them. They didn't look sick—or at least, not as far as Sarah could tell—and they weren't quite rotted, either. In fact, it almost looked like some huge toddler had a tantrum and kicked all of them down. Despite the fact that she probably should, Sarah decided that she didn't really care. She had lots of other problems; this was not one of them.

Still…

"I think my break is over," she said while standing. Setting off on a path that looked reasonable to her, she only corrected her course when Jareth muttered "left, Sarah," under his breath. Sarah acted as if it was her decision to take the path to the left, and Jareth had the good sense not to mention it.

Every now and then her wrist ached again, but Sarah got better and better at ignoring it. Linda, who frequently had no time for her young daughter's whining, was right; the more she paid attention to a hurt, the more it would aggravate her. Even so, as the tiny bite on her wrist became more tolerable, a small headache started just behind her eyes.

"Sarah," Jareth murmured the first time she stumbled. She pressed a hand to her head and mumbled that she was fine and that she just had a second headache. They continued on for a few more minutes in silence; Sarah was forging her path ahead of Jareth, who was watching her carefully. It was some time before he remembered that humans generally needed things like water and sustenance on a regular basis. He had eaten whenever she had in the two weeks they spent together in her world, and had found it enjoyable enough not to question. Somewhere along the way, he had forgotten that eating so frequently was not simply about pleasure for Sarah and her kind.

"Here," he said, offering her a conjured water bottle. It had seemed ridiculous to him at the time, but he could see their convenience now. It took Sarah a second to realize he was addressing her.

"Thanks," she said, and promptly drank half of it. She didn't even look twice at the apple he handed her either, even though it was clearly not the one she had wished into existence earlier in the morning. It struck him as perhaps unwise; after all, the last piece of food he had given her—though indirectly—had sent her straight into a spelled sleep and deposited her right into the trash pits outside of the city… When there had been trash pits filled with human oddities outside of the city, of course.

He realized, belatedly, that it probably meant she trusted him. It filled him with a feeling of giddiness, and something else he might have called 'flutteryness' if it wouldn't have wounded his pride.

 _It is simply an apple_ , he tried to tell himself. He didn't listen.

Trust was something hard-won, perhaps especially among his own kind, some of whom seemingly made it their life's goal to be as untrustworthy as possible. In the years after Sarah defeated the labyrinth and first intruded upon his solitude, he had taken it upon himself to study humans a little better, in the brief snatches of opportunity the curse allowed him. He had come to the conclusion that his previous actions would have made him supremely untrustworthy.

And here she was, not caring about any of that. The giddiness returned.

He was so wrapped up in dissecting the unusual feeling that he completely missed that Sarah had once again stopped walking . Jareth walked straight into her, forcing her to stumble another two steps forward. After a second's hesitation, she resumed walking.

But not for long.

A sharp pain blossomed across her cheek, and when Sarah raised her hand to it, her fingertips came across with a single drop of blood on them. Sarah stopped in her tracks and touched her cheek again, finding a small cut.

 _What is this?_ She looked around for what could have cut her.

What she found, tangled in the tree branches, was incredibly sharp, but very, very thin. Almost like…

"Spider webs," Sarah whispered, pinching a strand between her fingertips. Really, _really_ sharp spider webs, maybe. She said it softly enough, and Jareth was distracted enough that he did not hear her. The spider web was still trapped between her fingertips, but he didn't seem to see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe this was ordinary.

 _I would have appreciated a heads up_ , she thought, watching as he almost walked straight into one. It was like he couldn't even see them.

"Do you see this?" She asked, motioning towards the strand of web she had caught in between her fingers.

"See what, Sarah?"

So he _couldn't_ see them. Sarah didn't think he was malicious enough to pretend not to when he really could, so she chalked it up to a day of walking in warm weather and the remnants of her stressful night. Or at least she tried to—she wasn't actually very successful.

"Nothing. Sorry," Sarah said with a yawn, turning to face him. "I'm just tired. I know you're probably not, but do you mind if we stop for the night?"

 _Night?_ Jareth thought. The sky, though mostly obscured by tall tree branches, was clearly not dark. At best, it was late afternoon. He nodded anyway, wondering if she hadn't slept at all the night before.

Sarah yawned again, looked for the cleanest looking spot she could find, and sat down. Jareth found a few dry branches and promptly set them on fire. It was warm enough now, but the nights could get cold, and Sarah was not wearing long sleeves. Besides, she looked a little peaked and if there was one thing he thought he remembered about humans before his imprisonment, it was that they needed to be kept warm. He also threw her a down-stuffed pillow from the bedroom she had stayed in last night and two blankets.

She spread one out to lay on, and curled up under the other, content.

Though she wasn't asleep—yet—Jareth knew that this was not quite her normal behavior. Normally she put off going to sleep for as long as possible, and then tossed and turned. The only time he had seen her exhausted enough to go straight to sleep during the almost exactly two weeks he had spent in her bedroom was when she had worked for almost eleven straight hours in the library to cover a coworker's shift.

With a grumbled warning to him not to cuddle her, Sarah fell asleep.

* * *

 **A/N**

Holy cow, how is it Thursday already?

 **Guest:** Sorry that this didn't quite catch your fancy at first. Slogging through fic isn't always fun, but I'm really glad that you enjoy it! I hope that it's something you keep on enjoying. :)

As always, thank you-all of you-so much for your reviews. Real life is currently The Hottest Mess (TM) at the moment, so being able to take a small break to read what you guys are saying is just the best thing. Extra props to those of you reviewing every chapter because that is quite the task!


	14. Chapter 14

Sarah woke in her canopied bed, and immediately closed her eyes again. Her sheets were soft and silky, and it was just warm enough not to need a comforter. The gauzy curtains over her floor-to-ceiling windows swayed in the gentle wind; she had left the glass door leading to her balcony open the evening before, knowing that it wouldn't rain. She stretched and then sat up in her bed, eventually swinging her legs out from under her covers.

When she stepped out onto her balcony, the familiar view of lavender fields greeted her and surrounded her with the scent of sunshine and fresh lavender. The tea sitting on the small table beside her sun chair was brewed to perfection and still warm, but not too hot. The book which she had abandoned the evening before when the sun set was still on the seat of the chair and waiting for her to continue it. With a happy sigh, Sarah settled down to her tea and book, letting the sun soak into her skin.

The book, as befitting her favorite author, was marvelous and had a sweet ending. Sarah placed her empty tea cup back on the table she had found it and closed the book, placing that beside the cup on the table as well. But Sarah knew that she should probably get up and properly start her day. With the smallest of regrets, Sarah stood and walked through the glass door leading to her bedroom.

Instead of her bedroom, Sarah found herself standing on a stage, clutching a bouquet of roses, and staring past the blinding theater lights into the crowd. This did not alarm her; it was exactly where she was meant to be. The roar of the crowd drowned out most of the sound, but the cheering of her family was the loudest of all to her. They were in the second row, right in the middle. Sarah smiled widely and waved to them.

They made it! She was excited because she knew it was difficult to get tickets, and had only been able to provide two for free. But the rest had made it. Including, she noted with a rush of pride and gratitude, her mother. Linda had been busy with her own acting career, netting movie deals and even a musical on Broadway. Sarah hadn't thought she would be able to make it to closing night of the play she was in, but she did.

Sarah smiled and waved to them all from her place center on the stage, almost dropping her massive bundle of roses. They waved back, even Toby, who did not look thrilled to be wearing fancy clothes. Sarah felt happy tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, and as soon as the curtain dropped for the last time she dashed off to her dressing room to change. They were all going to go to dinner as a family, and it would be the first time they did so after the divorce. Everybody—Karen, Linda, Robert, Toby, and even baby Samantha—would be there.

Even—Sarah blushed to think about it—even Sean would be there. Tonight would be the night that she introduced him to her family. She was sure that she would love him as much as she did, and she had every hope that he would be joining the family soon enough. Sarah changed out of her character's clothes and into her own, wiping off the stage makeup that she didn't want to wear while outside of the theater.

Sean met her first and helped her split her bouquet into two, one of which he carried for her.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Sarah took a deep breath.

"Yes," she said, and took a step out of the theater.

Her heeled foot landed at the top of the concrete stairs, the door of the church still open behind her. The skirt of her frothy wedding dress swirled around her ankles and she clutched Sean's arm as they both posed for pictures. Karen and Linda, both wearing mother of the bride dresses, stood to the side; Linda cheered while Karen dabbed happy tears away with a handkerchief. Robert clapped a hand on Sean's shoulder, and Sean leaned down to kiss Sarah lightly on her cheek. She laughed and tossed her bouquet of pink roses in the crowd. Little Samantha, five years old, was the person to catch it.

Everybody laughed.

Sarah and Sean escaped into the waiting car.

A slightly younger Sarah rushed into her last class of the day. Her constitutional law class was fun, but difficult, and she knew a lot of her classmates didn't like it. She was afraid that the professor would think she was one of them, which was something that she didn't want; she was hoping that the professor would write her a letter of recommendation for the law school she hoped to get into.

Sarah clicked on her recorder and settled in to take notes, kicking her bag under her chair. They were starting the unit on the First Amendment today, which the professor had warned them might be difficult.

The president of the college handed her her degree and shook her hand; they both turned for a second to smile at the cameraman. Sarah had graduated with honors from the law school she had hoped to get into all those years ago, and had a job waiting for her New York already. Her father was proud, and Karen warned her playfully not to get too full of herself. Linda had sent her tickets to the play she was in, and hoped to see Sarah soon. Sarah walked across the stage with another degree under her belt and a bright future awaiting her.

Her family smiled in the crowd; Karen and Robert brought Toby, their only other child. There was one other person waiting for Sarah in the crowd, though she didn't notice him and she might not have recognized him if she saw him. His hair managed to be somehow both spiky and fluffy at the same time, though it was shorter than Sarah in another lifetime would have recognized. He didn't say her name or make a move to get any closer to her.

She descended from the stage and closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling. When she opened them she was in her bedroom, in her bed. Though the overhead fan was on, it was a little chilly in the room and she burrowed deeper under the covers. The cotton sheets helped to trap the warmth.

The fan gently moved the blonde hair of the man in bed next to her, and she knew him as husband before she could place a name. But by the time she recognized him it didn't matter anymore; this was her reality, and it was warm and sweet.

Sarah reached out to trace the line of his jaw with her fingertips as the taste of peaches filled her mouth. Strange, that. But she paid it no mind as the eyes of her husband opened.

He blinked once.

"Sarah," he said.

* * *

Jareth swore in every language he knew, and in quite a few that were dead. Sarah hadn't woken up yet, even though he tried shaking her awake once to no avail. When that happened, he checked her wrist, peeling back the bandage she had placed over it.

 _Careless!_ He had been utterly careless. He should have known, should have suspected that something was more wrong with Sarah than simply being tired. He had thought that declaring her as his intended would have offered her protection, but had also counted on news spreading more quickly than it evidently had. The denizens of the forest were unknowing—they had to be. Anything else would have been treason, and he had not been so benevolent that they could have possibly thought he would excuse it.

Even as he thought it, a scuttling noise behind him alerted him to the cause of Sarah's sleep. He turned, snarling, to the mass of dreamweaver spiders.

"She is my intended," Jareth growled at it. "I have first claim. You are not to touch her."

The spiders stared at him with eight luminous eyes before gnashing their tiny pincers. They were small and designed for discreet bites, like the rest of the creature. How he had missed them in the clearing, he didn't know. The only explanation was that he had left his guard down, and he vowed to himself that it would not happen again. Jareth stood in front of Sarah, blocking her partially from view.

"Turn now, or I will hunt you down and make all of your kind regret your actions."

After a pause, they turned and fled as one. Jareth sat down beside her and pulled her onto his lap so that he could hold her head up without much difficulty. In her sleep, she smiled and mumbled something.

Jareth swore again. There was every possibility that she wouldn't _want_ to leave her dreams, even if she managed to figure out what they were by herself. That was the true danger of the dreamweaver spider; their victims didn't even know what was happening.

The only way to make sure that she came back was to follow her into her dreams, but he doubted that he would be able to find her naturally. That had never really been his strong suit, but he did have one option, and much as he was starting to dislike the idea even as it formed in his mind.

He'd have to pull her deeper into dreams, add another layer that he could control so that he could pull her out through that and away from the dreamweaver spiders' influence. Jareth clenched his teeth and conjured a peach much like the one he had first given her all those years ago. He tore into its flesh with his teeth and held it over her mouth, letting some of the juice drip between her slightly parted lips. He closed his eyes, letting himself be overtaken by her dream.

When he opened them, he was on his side with Sarah reaching out to touch his face. She looked blissfully happy, and he felt for a second that it would be almost— _almost—_ a shame to ruin it.

"Sarah," he said, reaching out for her arm to pull her hand away from his face. "Wake up, love."

 _Let it not be said,_ he thought _, that I took advantage of her confusion._ Because he could. He knew he could. And he would hate himself for it.

Sarah laughed and scooted closer to him under the covers. "What a silly thing to say! I _am_ awake. You're awake. And," she said with a sigh, "I suppose the kids will be awake soon too. Guess we have to get up."

His stomach lurched. _Kids?_ She dreamed that they had kids. Together.

"No, Sarah," he said. "You are dreaming. Something called a dreamweaver spider bit you. Think back. What are the last things you can remember?"

She paused, her smile freezing on her face. "What do I remember?" Sarah thought back, but the clearest memory she had before waking up was one that didn't make sense, not for where she was now. She had been graduating, but surely she didn't go through school with two small children at home, and besides…

The smile slipped off her face. Her stomach churned.

"And you. You're here—real—now?" She panicked for a second at what he might make of this dream, and wondered how much he knew. "Get me out of here," she whispered. "I don't know what… why…"

He nodded, and for a second Sarah caught a glimpse of a room decorated almost entirely in white, with gauzy fabric hanging from the walls and spindly little tables and chairs dotting the edges. She remembered this place, though the last time she had been here it was under very different circumstances. The ballroom.

Sarah didn't even have time to protest before he whisked her back out of it and shepherded her back into consciousness.

* * *

 **A/N**

Pffft, I was in such a rush to get this posted that I forgot to actually add the line break. I edited for that.


	15. Chapter 15

The first thing Sarah saw when she woke up was Jareth, who pointedly avoided looking at her. He stared off into the middle distance, as if overcome with the ennui of having yet another young woman wake up in his arms. Sarah was fairly certain that didn't happen often to him, if at all, so she was a little insulted for a second. She stared up at his jaw and frowned, trying to piece together her memory.

The part of her that remembered she shouldn't be insulted kicked in, and she scrambled out of his arms.

"Didn't I tell you not to touch me?" she asked, sounding more peevish than she meant to. The dreams were still jumbled around in her head and she was still trying to make sense of them, but she was fairly certain that Jareth had something to do with it. And something about a spider, but the fact that she woke up draped over his lap with him holding her head seemed to her to be damning evidence of _something_.

"I believe you said _cuddle_ , dearest, and I can assure you that is not what happened." He remained seated at the base of the tree. "In fact, I was helping you."

Sarah bit back a laugh and crossed her arms. "Helping me? How? By cramming weird… dreams into my head?" She motioned to the peach and bit back the bile that rose in her throat.

"I underestimated the more voracious denizens of the forest. The dreamweaver spider, if you remember that conversation, is very good at going undetected. Due in part to my own negligence you were bitten, but it is unlikely that you would have come out from the dream unaided. I used _this_ ," he said, holding up the peach with a single bite taken out of it, "to enter your dreams so that I could pull you out."

Sarah scoffed, to disguise how uneasy she really was. As much as she didn't want to believe it, his words felt true. But what she remembered of the last dream—snatches of the white ballroom had been forgotten—sent a crawling sensation all over her skin.

"But—"

"Your dreams, Sarah, were entirely your own. Though the dreamweaver spiders _do_ make sure they're enjoyable and don't stray into nightmares. They need you to be pliant and unaware, of course; I assume that you know how spiders in general feed."

Sarah's face burned red, and she was struck with the sudden realization that he was _teasing_ her. He was teasing her, and he was sitting under that tree in the same position he had held her in, and he was _smirking_. It was enough to make Sarah want to scream in frustration. Instead, she decided to play it as cool as she didn't feel.

"Fine," said Sarah, as she folded her hands together. "Then if all you did was _help_ me and you didn't tamper with any of those dreams, or anything, then fine. I'm not angry at you." _For that,_ said the way her hands were clenched together. "And if it is okay with you, let's keep moving, please."

"Well _I_ am quite tired, Sarah," Jareth said, "since one of us was doing all of the dashing heroics while the other was doing all of the sleeping."

Sarah watched as he curled up under the blanket she had vacated and closed his eyes. Which was a pity because Sarah was looking forward to showing him just how unaffected she was. Instead of that, however, she settled for trying to wish for camping equipment. It seemed that the bigger it was—and the more improbable to find randomly in the wilderness—the harder a time she had actually conjuring it. Smaller things, like fresh eggs were easy. The cast iron frying pan was not. It worked better when she just expected it to be there and didn't exert more of a conscious effort.

Eventually she had enough to make herself a passable meal, with enough left over for Jareth. Sarah considered dumping it all on his head, but then thought better of it. Instead, she peeled the bandage the rest of the way off her wrist and peered at where a tiny bite had been not too long ago. It was gone, of course, and Sarah wondered if that was Jareth's doing or not.

But Sarah quickly put that thought away because thinking of the bite made her think of the dreams, which in turn made her think of Jareth—particularly in the last dream—which was not something she was necessarily up for. So for a handful of hours, Sarah busied herself by dozing on and off and pointedly not looking at the Goblin King stretched out on a blanket in front of her.

Except that she woke up again to him peering at her face, which on top of being quite disconcerting was far too reminiscent of the dream she would rather forget. Sarah squealed, which Jareth found endlessly amusing.

"That was uncalled for," she spat when she felt she was in better control of her words. Jareth stood back up and leaned back so that he could tower over her. He wasn't throwing snakes or scorpions in her face anymore, but he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in purposely throwing her off guard.

"Well, if you are quite ready to go," he said, offering her his hand. "I wouldn't have imagined that you needed more sleep—though perhaps you were chasing more dreams of me, hm?"

Sarah scoffed and ignored the hand he offered her, preferring to clamber to her feet herself. With a wave of his hand he cleaned up their campsite and the things she had worked so hard to summon; she wondered if she should be irritated about that, but decided that she would continue to work for the aloofness which she had so far failed to maintain.

"Think what you want," she said lightly, brushing off her jeans. The fact that she could feel the blush spread across her cheeks irritated her greatly. Instead of focusing on it, she let Jareth pick the path this time and followed where he led. Since he seemed to know where he was going, and she didn't particularly like the idea of him stealing glances at her rear as they walked. Though she didn't have any concrete proof that he was, Sarah was willing to follow her intuition on this one. And she was perfectly happy staring at _his_ for the time being.

"So, Sarah," he said after a while, slowing to walk beside her. "Exactly how many children _did_ we have in this dream of yours?"

"Oh, shut _up_."

He did not. Jareth continued to prod Sarah about the things she dreamed while under the influence of the spiders. Sarah remained tight-lipped and refused to answer any of his questions with anything but rolled eyes or pointed glares. Eventually they devolved into bickering, until Sarah had more than enough.

"Please," Sarah said, exasperated, "please, be quiet."

Jareth smirked at her, which happened to break the last of her patience.

"You _know_ ," she hissed, "I was asleep for a while, so I had a _lot_ of dreams. That was the only one I remember _you_ being in." And then she stomped off ahead of him, trying to look as dignified as possible while avoiding the underbrush. "And it's not like we even _did_ anything!" She added as an afterthought, and then immediately regretted it.

Jareth, while not typically given to feeling guilty for his actions, did feel some hint of remorse. It was dampened by the way Sarah turned around occasionally to make sure she was still heading in the right direction, but he felt it all the same.

"Sarah," he said with a sigh. "I apologize. Truly. Dreams are sacred spaces and should never be intruded upon—"

Sarah snorted. "That's rich, coming from you."

" _If_ you will let me continue. I apologize for trespassing—even if it was to save you—and for continuing to discuss it when you so clearly wish to avoid the subject."

Sarah thought it was rather nice, as far as Goblin King apologies went. Acceptable by normal standards, even. And then he went and spoiled it by shooting her his trademark, lopsided, I'm-about-to-be-a-jerk grin and opening his mouth.

"Though if you will admit, the subject is _very_ interesting to me."

Sarah shrieked with outraged embarrassment and ripped a fistful of leaves off of the nearest tree. She tried her best to throw them in his face, but they fluttered harmlessly to the ground. Jareth at least looked a little guilty, though it did nothing to help Sarah's mortification.

"That wasn't an apology, you know!"

The way he grinned told her that he knew, but whether or not he cared was another matter entirely. Sarah scowled darkly at him, completely giving up her unaffected ruse. It was worthless, and they both knew it; if Sarah was one thing now around the Goblin King it definitely was _not_ unaffected.

The only thing that served to lighten her mood was the fact that the trees were starting to become less dense, with newer growth sprouting from the ground; it meant that they were starting to reach the far edge of the forest. Jareth had placed them somewhere in the middle of it, so Sarah didn't really have any idea how long it would take them to traverse it. But as Sarah was starting to feel better about their prospects, Jareth was starting to feel worse and worse. He knew that once they got out of the forest completely, they had to cross grassy plains. The grassy plains would give way to sand; the ground long ago had the life leeched from it.

And then there it would be, waiting for her.

Sarah's fate, bound behind a disk of metal.

"Hey," Sarah finally said, shaking him from his reverie. She knocked her arm against his, forcing him to look at her. "I just want you to know that I know that I should probably be really angry, but I've decided that I'm not."

It was a surprising declaration from her. _But then again,_ Jareth thought _, she also forgave that horrid Hogsbreath._ Perhaps she did not see them as all that different, and perhaps her forgiveness was derived from pity.

" _But_ if you're so concerned with a dream you were never meant to see in the first place, at least let me explain myself so you don't go getting too big of a head." Sarah had taken the opportunity that their earlier silence presented her to dissect what she thought her feelings might be. She had reached a somewhat humbling conclusion which she was sure neither one of them would be really happy with—though for very different reasons.

"I think I told you before that I wasn't actually sure if I should have believed if you were real the first time we met. I was pretty sure that I had at least partially made some of the whole affair up, and I didn't really want to question it. I had other things to worry about when I got home, you know. Not all of us live surrounded with magic. Or if we do, not a lot of us _know_ about it," she conceded. "So, you know, I might have had a silly crush. But who _doesn't_ get silly crushes on people they think are totally unattainable? In your case it was because I wasn't sure you even _existed_."

Sarah sighed and brushed her hair back behind her ears, not checking to see how Jareth was reacting to her words. She could imagine that to some degree, they stung; she wouldn't like somebody to think she was an imaginary creature, after all. Laying part of her soul bare in a magical forest to a creature which had at one point been a god was not something Sarah had ever thought she would do. It didn't exactly make her feel good, and she was glad to know that they would both soon be out of the forest. Even just up ahead she could see the break in the trees, and it was only through an exertion of will power that she could keep herself for sprinting to it.

"So, you know, seeing you again sort of dredged all that up again, I guess. Can't blame _me_ if you were scary the first time and my brain wanted to make you not scary. So this is all chalked up to a silly crush and we can put it to rest. Nothing more," Sarah said. If she felt the half-truth on her own lips, she didn't acknowledge it.

Jareth's spirits had been dampened considerably; first, Sarah insisted that she felt absolutely nothing, which he did not want to believe was true. And second, they reached the end of the forest. The Disk was growing closer and closer.

* * *

 **A/N**

Happy 100 reviews!


	16. Chapter 16

Sarah and Jareth left the forest behind them; Sarah was exultant, but thought that Jareth was as moody as ever. She thought that he was upset because she told him that she wasn't in love with him, not really, and thought it was a bit of an extreme reaction. It might have been easier if she was completely right, but she wasn't.

"While we're on the subject of dreams," she said, hoping to distract him with something else.

"I did not believe we were, anymore," he interrupted tersely.

"Don't be rude," she replied lightly, rolling her eyes. "But while we're on the subject of dreams, I had one a while ago, with the Disk in it. So I think I've seen it before, mostly because it felt so real and, well, you showed up after it. So," she paused long enough to purse her lips. "Anyway, the Disk—or the thing behind it, I guess—said that if it ate the heart of a goddess it would live forever." Somewhere in her words was a question, but Sarah had a difficult time finding it herself and wondered if Jareth would be able to pick it up.

Jareth laughed, a sharp, barking sound that sounded almost malicious to Sarah.

" _You_ are not a goddess, Sarah. Don't go getting a big head."

His words stung, mostly because that's not what she had been thinking in the first place. Instead of letting him know, she tried to remain impassive and instead quirked a single eyebrow at him, a mannerism she had unwittingly picked up from him.

"It would have said anything to make you uneasy or startle you. No; it would be best to ignore it completely rather than give it the upper hand."

Sarah huffed and shrugged, knowing that he was right.

"But that doesn't explain," she said after a minute of consideration, "why _you_ were there. And why you then actually showed up in my _bedroom_. And that whole business about me calling you is a load of crap I don't believe for a second, so you know."

Jareth barked a laugh again, throwing back his head this time as if overwhelmed with mirth. Sarah wondered if this was going to be a regular thing, him laughing at her, and decided that she didn't really like it. His laughter sounded predatory, somehow.

"Of course I would know when you're in my lands, Sarah, physically or not. I am _very_ aware of you, after all."

Sarah opened her mouth, searched for something to say and came up short, and closed it again. She settled instead for shooting him a glare.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Sarah. You said it yourself, I believe: the descendant of the very king that was my downfall being my lover? It paints a very pretty picture—such a tragic story. Made even more tragic, of course, by the fact that whatever you may or may not feel for _me_ , I do hold a certain affection for _you_."

Sarah took too deep a breath too quickly, and ended up coughing sputtering beside him as he watched coolly. She got her breathing back under control, but found that she couldn't really look him in the eye. _This is not good_ , thought Sarah. _This is…_

"Hey!" she protested, whirling to face him. Her previous embarrassment was forgotten under the weight of her newest realization. "I was _sixteen_ when I first met you! And you're—you're ageless, or something. That's a little gross, don't you think?" She _almost_ said that it was excusable on her part because teenagers were almost famous for making poor love decisions but decided against it, lest she turn his attention back to her own feelings. _Better to let that one lie,_ she decided.

"Words, Sarah," he said, tapping her on her nose. "I did not say _love_ , I said _certain affection_. They mean different things. Pay attention."

She frowned and batted his hand away. "Still doesn't make it much better," she mumbled.

"Of course it does," he scoffed. "It wasn't quite _love_ , after all—nothing so romantic. It has since changed, at any rate."

Sarah didn't have to ask to know in which direction it had changed, and was saved from answering by a scream coming from the forest behind them. It sounded distinctly human, like something inside was being torn apart.

" _Sarah!_ "

The scream came from the forest and Sarah jerked towards it before Jareth grabbed her elbow. The screaming stopped, replaced instead by her name hissing through the branches. Eerie laughter bubbled out. The little hairs on her arms stood on end and she suppressed a shudder. A second later she felt that now-familiar falling sensation as Jareth held his grip on her elbow.

They moved, but barely; when Sarah felt the world stop shifting, she saw that they had only managed to move about thirty yards, hardly enough distance between them and whatever was in the forest. When she looked up to him, Sarah saw that Jareth's jaw was clenched.

Again and again he tried to move them, and managed only small distances each time; the longer her tried, the shorter the distance, until he was shaking with exhaustion and had sweat sliding down his temples.

"Jareth," Sarah said, more to just say something. Her voice shook. "What is it?"

"I believe we will see in a moment. Sarah, run," he ordered from behind clenched teeth.

From the forest exploded a pack of dogs, dappled gold and dark brown and black, slavering jaws open all the way back to their ears. Sarah realized with dread that her name and the laughter was coming from _them_. She also realized, as they approached more rapidly than she thought possible, that they weren't dogs at all. They looked a little more like hyenas, but far more terrible.

"Crocotta," Jareth hissed. "It's the nothingness behind the Disk, preventing us from moving," he said, "and I do not have enough power to fight it anymore." He didn't need to say any more; she knew well enough that it was Berwyn who had bound him to his current state.

"Can we outrun them?" Sarah asked, stepping backwards. The look that Jareth shot her told her that they could not. Instead, he pulled her along after him, moving as quickly as they could without much magic. It wasn't enough.

She was out of breath before they could get too far, even though she was certain that Jareth had been using the last of his reserves to speed them along the best he could. Sarah turned around long enough to see one of the crocotta scenting the air.

Then it looked her right in the eyes and _grinned_.

"They shouldn't be here," Jareth ground out. "They shouldn't have been able to find us." His exertions were visibly tiring him, and Sarah knew that as soon as his magic failed, they'd be gone for sure.

"it's me," Sarah gasped, touching the place on her cheek where the spider web had cut her. "It's my blood. I left some in the tomb and in the forest. Just a little bit—but maybe they could have followed that."

 _Careless, careless, careless,_ she thought to herself, knowing even as she thought it that it was useless. The mistake had been made, and there would be no taking it back. Sarah didn't look up to see if Jareth was angry or not, deciding that she'd much rather not die knowing that he blamed her for their deaths.

 _But surely,_ she thought as she stumbled over her own feet, _surely there is something that I can do—I can't let him do everything, I'd never live it down_. She ignored the part of her that said she probably wasn't going to be living all that much longer anyway.

Sarah took a deep breath and focused on moving the both of them. For a second—one glorious second—she thought that she might have managed it.

But then what felt like a brick wall slammed down on her senses and they were spat out not five feet from where they stood before. It felt like something had been _ripped_ from her, torn from her very being. Sarah gasped and doubled over, wondering how Jareth had managed so many short bursts if that was what he experienced as well.

The crocotta were gangly and looked ill-proportioned, but they were fast and there wasn't much ground separating them from Jareth and Sarah. Sarah was certain that the teeth she could see in their jaws would do some damage, and it made her queasy thinking about it.

They stopped about ten meters away, as if called to a halt by their invisible master. Whether or not they had one, Sarah wasn't sure, but they didn't move forward. Instead, they stood and grinned at the both of them. Some kept up their eerie, too-human laughter.

Sarah opened up her mouth to make a wish, something that she hoped would at least slow them down.

And then the ground rumbled under their feet.

Sarah shrieked and Jareth swore, and even the crocotta were thrown to the ground as it heaved and rumbled. She was somewhat gratified to hear some of them yelp, but she knew that it didn't come from her.

The earth stilled for a second, and then erupted again, showering Jareth and Sarah with warm dirt. The sinkhole that opened stretched further, eating away at the ground under Sarah's hands and Jareth's boots.

As they fell into the massive sinkhole caused by what Sarah could only imagine was an earthquake, Sarah reached a moment of perfect clarity. She knew exactly what needed to happen, and what she had to do.

"I wish," she pronounced, forcing the words out around the air that rushed into her mouth, "that Jareth's power was unbound." Something seemed to snap into place around them, and Sarah had enough time to look up through her wind-tossed air to see Jareth grinning manically in a way that she had never seen before.

If she'd had enough time to really process anything, it might have made her a little nervous. He didn't give her enough time to do anything of the sort; instead, she found herself suddenly on solid ground, half dizzy from the change. Jareth stood in front of the crocotta, his wide, unnerving grin still on his face.

He pointed to each beast individually, and as he did they shrieked, still sounding far too human for Sarah to be comfortable. As she watched, their legs grew scaly and burrowed into the ground.

 _Roots!_ Sarah thought _They're turning into roots!_ She forced herself to watch only for a few more seconds, the horror of what was happening almost overwhelming her. Jareth was turning the crocotta into trees, a veritable forest, even, and it seemed to be painful to the creatures. That didn't seem to bother Jareth at all—quite the opposite, in fact.

Sarah was struck with the realization that while he would probably never hurt _her_ , he had no such reservations about anything else. He would be a very, very dangerous enemy indeed. She shuddered and glanced over at him again only to see malicious glee written all over his face. Sarah covered her eyes with her hands and wished she could block out the noises made by the crocotta turning into trees.

When it stopped, she peeked out between her fingers only to see that he had turned them into dogwood trees. And he was _laughing_ about it, as if it was the most hilarious joke he had ever come across in his considerably long life.

"You," whispered Sarah, trying to smile from behind her hands, "have the absolute _worst_ sense of humor."

* * *

 **A/N**

For more on the crocotta, I'd suggest digging up some .pdfs of old bestiaries, some of which are available through Project Guttenberg! It's fun stuff. While _these_ crocotta are sort of an amalgam of different sources, they owe most of their roots to Photius's summarization of Ctesias's _Indica_.


	17. Chapter 17

Sarah hid behind her hands and waited for him to say something—anything—but he was silent. She didn't hear him as he walked closer to her, but she certainly felt it when he scooped her up as if she weighed nothing at all, and when he spun her in tight circles.

"Stop!" She cried. "Put me down!"

Jareth put her down and stared at her, holding her shoulders. Sarah hugged herself and tried not to think of the new trees behind her. If she noticed the way he looked at her, she didn't comment on it; Jareth was unsure how to feel about that. He decided, finally, that he really did love her. For the first time, he wondered if she might return his feelings. He considered that, and her, until she peered up at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Say something," she said. "You're kind of freaking me out right now." Sarah stepped as far away from him as she could get while his hands were still holding her upper arms. There was now enough space for Sarah to put a whole step's distance between them.

"Sarah," he said, dropping his hands from her arms.

"What?" she asked hesitantly, wondering if she should be edging away at all. There didn't seem to be any obvious escape routes, and the only real way away from him would mean going towards the new dogwood trees. The trees seemed even less inviting than the ones in the forest had been.

" _Sarah_ ," Jareth said, reaching out to her with both of his hands. Sarah almost flinched, but did not have enough time to before he gently cupped her face and not-so-gently pressed his lips to hers in what was the most frantic kiss she had ever experienced.

Sarah squeaked and stumbled backwards, but Jareth only came with her. Out of all the things she would have expected to happen after unbinding his powers, a desperate make out session was definitely not one of them. This resulted in her being more bewildered than insulted that he obviously felt he could just kiss her at will, no matter her feelings on the whole matter. The fact that her feelings weren't all negative bothered her a little as well.

What felt like hours later, she managed to summon up the strength of will to push him away. Sarah put all of her strength and perhaps a little bit too much vehemence into her shove, which actually sent Jareth reeling back a few steps.

And then, of course, he had the gall to look hurt. Sarah thought, not for the first time, that he was more like a spoiled child than a fully grown ex-god sometimes, and almost threw her hands up into the air. Jareth's thoughts, meanwhile, were racing between two primary ideas.

The first was that he could feel the full force of his power returned, thrumming through his veins like a song he had forgotten long ago. The second revolved around Sarah herself; the fact that she had returned what had been taken so long ago had to mean _something_ , he felt. And she had returned them freely, mostly, without asking him for anything in return. He couldn't say that he would have ever done the same. He also couldn't make himself believe that she didn't love him, not after all that had happened.

" _What_ ," she hissed, "was _that?_ " It wasn't that she hated it, exactly, but Sarah liked to know what she was getting into before things started. An unpredictable Jareth—which, to be fair, was almost the average Jareth—usually meant for a bad time for Sarah. The one thing she could almost count on was him being as irritating as possible; she didn't know if this was just the latest in a long line of ways to toy with her. It stung.

Jareth breathed sharply out of his nose and ran a hand through his hair and stepped back towards Sarah again. He reached out, then drew back and reached out again, as if he couldn't make up his mind. Eventually he settled on hovering his hands somewhere near her elbows, as if he was afraid that she might shock him if he got too close.

He looked for a second like he might kiss her again, but as soon as she took a deep breath to steady herself, he dropped his arms to his side and stepped away. For some reason, she noted with irritation, he avoided looking her in the eyes. Or at all really. He seemed to be very suddenly interested in the horizon.

 _So you kiss me and then can't talk to me?_ _That is_ not _happening_ , Sarah thought.

"Tell me what you're thinking," she said

"I am thinking," he said, stepping nearer to her and focusing once again on her face, "that you are a spectacular, generous, wonderful creature. Why would you do that?" His gaze was hot, but not, Sarah was quick to remind herself, hot in the way the latest movie star was hot. Hot in the way that made her gulp. More to the point, it made _her_ hot. She wondered if her face was red and if it could be excused by their latest dash.

Sarah's mind was blank for more than a few seconds, so she had to think about what he was talking about before she could answer. And drag her focus away from his lips.

"The wish…?" She blinked. "Oh, no, that was the least I could do, I mean…" Her protestations died out, partly because she wasn't sure what else to say, but mostly because he reached out and gently tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. The motion brought them much closer together—close enough that she felt the sleek fabric of his shirt brush against her cheek, and she could smell the burnt sugar tang of his magic.

He leaned in close enough that she could feel his lips on her ear, and her heart skidded almost to a stop.

"Oh no, Sarah. That was not something that you had to do." And then he bit her earlobe.

She swallowed. Hard.

 _Holy shit_ , she thought. _Is the Goblin King_ seducing _me?_

Jareth pulled her to his chest and slid his arms down her back. When his hands grazed her lower back she squeaked, only to have him reach down and hook his hands under her upper thighs. She wrapped her legs around him so that he could pick her up.

 _He is,_ she thought deliriously. _And it's working_.

She was only disappointed for a little when he sat immediately. Sarah had her hands pressed against his shoulders the way she did when he kissed her in their failed bid for assistance from other gods, but this time she didn't even consider pushing him away. Instead, she ran one of her hands through his hair. It was just as soft as she always thought it would be, despite the fact that it defied gravity so easily. He pulled his hands out from underneath her legs.

And then he pulled his gloves off with his teeth.

"I want to touch you," he growled, waiting for Sarah to nod. His mouth crashed down on hers and Sarah tore at his shirt. To her frustration, he was still wearing his staple billowing sort of shirt, devoid of buttons to yank apart. She settled for winding one of her hands back into his hair and busying her other with exploring his chest under his shirt. The dipping neckline was good for something, after all.

Jareth unbuttoned her jeans and she shifted so that he could easier slide his hand inside. His thumb grazed the inside of her thigh and she shuddered; she shuddered again when he cupped her. He pushed aside her panties and rubbed her sensitive nub, grinning wildly when her fingernails scratched his chest.

Sarah moaned and rocked against his hand.

"Oh, my God," she breathed as his lips found her neck. He grinned.

"Accurate assessment, precious," he said, and Sarah felt the vibrations of his voice all the way through her body. She shuddered and tilted her head back while his other hand found its way up under her shirt and around to her back. Jareth pulled her in close and nipped at her collarbone.

"No," groaned Sarah, trying to get her thoughts in order. "You know what I mean."

"Haven't the foggiest," lied Jareth as he traced her ribcage with his fingertips. When he cupped her breast with his bare hand, she inhaled sharply. "But you started it," he teased. "Besides," he brought his other hand up to run down the length of her arm, "you haven't let me go yourself."

Which was the wrong thing to say, all things considered, because as soon as she realized she had one hand on his bare chest and one still tangled in his hair, she snatched them back. Jareth tried not to pout.

"Did not start it. It was… this was adrenaline. I don't… I mean…" Sarah ran out of words and protestations, but didn't move.

"If you say so," Jareth said languidly, staring back at her with half-opened eyes. "But if you recall, we're been in plenty of other adrenaline-inducing situations, and this has not happened before. I wish, Sarah, that you would make up your mind."

But Sarah felt as if somebody doused her with cold water. She scrambled off of his lap and well out of reaching distance from him. Then she sat on her heels and peered at him from her safe distance of seven feet away.

"A wish," she said, feeling sick to her stomach. "My wishes _affect_ you. Oh no, _oh_ my God." Sarah buried her face in her hands and tried to take deep breaths.

It was utterly humiliating.

All the things he'd done, or said… had she somehow influenced them? Had she made accidental wishes? Sarah felt sick to her stomach and curled in even further on herself.

"Is there a problem?" he asked, knowing very well that if there wasn't, Sarah wouldn't be curled into a ball so far away from him. He didn't see what all of the fuss was about; of course her magic would affect him to some degree. After all, Berwyn's had, and she had been well aware of that fact. Aware enough to know that Berwyn was the one who had sealed his power, and that she could release it.

"Of _course_ there's a problem!" Sarah shouted, lifting her head to glare at him. When her eyes met his she turned an unattractive shade of red and groaned. If she had in any way influenced him without him knowing—or even with him knowing—well, that was akin to a crime, wasn't it? And if either of them had _acted_ on her accidental wish, then that would have been even _worse_. She tried to take another deep breath and get her voice under control. It shook anyway.

"If I wished—even inadvertently—for _anything_ regarding you, then… That's not really fair, is it? To make you feel, or think, or do things that you wouldn't normally. That's… I'm as bad as that king, then." Sarah rubbed her face with her hands and sighed.

"Perhaps you would be," Jareth conceded. Sarah still looked to spooked for him to move closer to her, so he hadn't bothered to get up from where he had been sitting with her not two minutes earlier. "However, at least do me the courtesy of pretending me competent enough to know when somebody has attempted to bespell me."

Sarah squinted at him, removing her hands from her face. What he was saying was too… convenient. She couldn't help but to think that he was saying that simply to make her feel better, possibly even as a direct result of any magic she might have accidentally done.

"Fine," said Sarah. There's really only one way to make sure that everything's okay, isn't there?"

Jareth was intrigued; he had learned that she had her own certain way of solving problems, whether it was smashing her way out of the peach dream, or bickering with the guard doors, or even settling petty disputes with her group mates. He could only hope that he would find this solution as agreeable as she might.

Sarah licked her lips once, took a deep breath, and looked up into the sky.

"I wish that my wishes wouldn't affect Jareth and that his feelings were his own."

* * *

 **A/N**

 **Guest:** Aw, shucks. Thanks for the review! I hope you keep on enjoying this story!


	18. Chapter 18

Jareth rolled his eyes towards the sky and stood, brushing off any dirt that might have been clinging to him. Sarah stayed where she was on the ground, watching him carefully.

"Really, Sarah," he said, looming over her. She scowled up at him. _Good_ , he thought. Anything to snap her out of her self-pity and needless worries. "You should think your wishes and their intentions through before you say them." He offered her a hand and she stared at it for a moment before ignoring it in favor of standing up by herself. She didn't want his help, not when she was trying to figure out the entire situation surrounding him.

"Besides, you might be gratified to know that I doubt my feelings have changed towards you in any regard, not in the way you were thinking that they might," he said. Though they hadn't changed since he last bothered to think about them, they were myriad and difficult to label. What had been an affectionate curiosity derived mostly from boredom when she had been a child—a mixture that might have been called love by those of his kind most divorced from their humanity—had changed. While he had been staying with her in her world, animosity had been tempered eventually with pity and companionship.

Jareth's kind—or what had once been his kind—were tempests trapped in flesh. Their emotions were fierce, but malleable. When they didn't pass, they were likely to stay forever; grudges were serious business. It was dangerous to let the seed of a thing too long with one of Jareth's kind, especially if it was unwanted, because if not squashed immediately it would only grow. In the case of Jareth's feelings towards Sarah, Sarah had been unaware of them enough to let them alone, largely. Most of his anger and resentment had vanished or been explained away.

What had started off as an amused affection for her had grown almost out of control, unfettered by neither of their whims. It did not help that neither of them were particularly interested in managing anything of the sort. Now, however, they had to deal with the consequences. Jareth found that he wouldn't particularly mind them if it wasn't _Sarah_ , of all people, the one destined to be a sacrifice to the nothingness her forebears trapped so long ago. This was an old thought, but one that frequented his mind.

Sarah snorted and turned away from him, taking a discreet moment to re-zipper her jeans.

"I don't know why I bother trying to be serious with you at all," she snapped. "All you ever do is tease me."

Jareth pursed his lips and crossed his arms, managing a fair impression of Sarah. She was, and always would be, blind to things that she didn't want to see. This had to have been one of them, or she wouldn't have been so mulish.

"As you insist, Sarah," he said. "But I advise that we be on our way before any other unmentionable creature manages to find us. Again."

Sarah wondered if he was _trying_ to get so deep under her skin. Sure, it might have technically been her fault that she left a trail for the crocotta to follow, but it wasn't like it had been on purpose. She hadn't somehow foreseen that that they'd be let loose and follow the tiniest of trails left in her blood. There was a _lot_ that she hadn't foreseen, and the crocotta were the least of them.

For example, Jareth. Somehow, he still managed to blindside her in just about everything he did. By now, she thought he knew him pretty well. He liked to tease her, and bother her, and generally aggravate her most of the time. When he wasn't doing that, sometimes he was oddly charming, in his own way. And then, there was this.

Confessions of love were not something that Sarah thought were even remotely close to being within his capabilities. But he'd just made one, of a sort, and even if it was far from the fairytale, heart-stopping admittance that Sarah had once upon a time toyed with the idea of wanting to hear, it was real. Sarah shoved her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders, trying to look as unromantic as possible.

She breezed past him with her hands still in her pockets, giving off the impression that she wasn't deeply troubled that her most recent wish had changed nothing. The nagging fear that it somehow would be cancelled out by any previous wishes wouldn't leave her alone, even though she couldn't remember ever wishing that he'd be in love with her. But there was the book, and that had certainly fueled all of her weird, half-formed daydreams. But the book had existed even before she knew that he existed… Sarah furrowed her eyebrows and lengthened her stride.

The sun beat down on them from above, end eventually even the shade from the crocotta trees was far behind both of them. The grass became scraggly as they kept going, fading eventually form verdant green to a dry brown. On the few occasions Sarah snuck glances at Jareth, she could tell from his expression that it should not have looked like this. Something was wrong.

Dead and dying grass crumbled under Sarah's sensible sneakers, and under Jareth's boots, even though he barely made any noise as he walked beside her. By the time the grass faded away, Sarah's legs ached and she longed to stop. She had already materialized food and drink—enough for two meals—after several failed attempts. Whether or not it was the fault of the Disk, or the nothingness behind it, her magic was growing more and more difficult to tap into. The sand under their feet seemed to soak it right up; Sarah could only imagine how Jareth was reacting if _she_ was feeling sick herself.

 _I should have cared more in gym,_ Sarah thought, trying to bring some levity to her train of thought. _Jeez_.

But any humor that she tried to summon withered and died as they crested the last sandy hill. Below them was the very same Disk that Sarah had seen in her dream, still reflecting the sun above it so brightly that Sarah's eyes burned. But in the center it looked just a little bit different. She squinted, but couldn't see through the light that reflected off the bronze surface.

Sarah half slid down the sand towards the Disk, and Jareth followed a pace behind.

Each equal half of the Disk gleamed up at Sarah, together as wide as she was tall. Jareth collapsed to his knees in the sand, landing with a soft _whump_ that Sarah half turned her head to. Like before, her gaze was locked on the Disk.

"No," Sarah whispered, knowing that whatever had happened, it didn't bode well for them.

The Disk was cracked in half.

* * *

"It's escaped," said Jareth, sounding hollow. Of all the things he had expected, this was not it; he hadn't even felt the power of the Disk breaking. But it had, and it sat there in two as if mocking him. Through the break in the Disk he could see a hollow in the ground below it. However the nothingness had been trapped, it must have resided in that space. The thought struck him as perhaps a little odd—how can nothing ness take up space in which to reside? —but he had heard of it so often, and lived with its presence for so long, that he no longer questioned it. It simply was.

He did not have the luxury of letting his despair overtake him for too long. Jareth stood just as quickly as he let himself fall and closed off any entry and exit points, few as they were, to his realm. Only he, who they were keyed through, could allow something in or out. Unless he died, of course, but being largely immortal, thoughts of his own death very rarely bothered him. It was Sarah that most concerned him in that regard, after all. At the edges of his senses he could feel where the nothingness was waiting; it created a void where everything was barren.

And it was waiting for Sarah, limiting itself to a certain area to lure her in. Taking her in one fell swoop, catching her unaware—that would never do. He should know; he had felt the same way at one point. It would wait for Sarah to deliver herself to it, and then gobble her up and make her nothing as well.

"You need to go, Sarah," he said. Now that it was almost literally the eleventh hour, he could not allow her to go through with the sacrifice. "Go back to your family, your life. I release you from your duty."

Sarah laughed at him, but even to her it sounded weak.

"You don't have that sort of authority," she said. "And besides, this is what I'm supposed to do. It's my burden, and I told you I'd find a way out of the sacrifice—because it _is_ meant to be my life, yes? You weren't just letting me think that to be cruel? I'll find a way around that," she said when he nodded. Sarah couldn't pretend that she was not afraid, so she didn't even try. It wasn't worth it, anyway, not when Jareth was so clearly perturbed. Pretending would ring false, and now was not a time for lies.

Jareth knew Sarah's stubbornness well, and he could see it in the way she set her jaw. There would be no convincing her to go back, or to stay away from the nothingness waiting at the castle. No doubt it had been drawn to the necropolis willed with the bodies of her brethren under the castle. It would have been a fitting place to devour the current and last scion with all of the family's power, had Jareth been willing to allow that to happen.

"Where is it?" Sarah asked. "Don't look at me like that; I can tell by your expression that you know where it is, or at least have an idea."

"The castle," he said, "where all malevolences wait."

Sarah sighed. "Will we have to walk all the way back there? Because while I'll do it if we have to, I think that would waste a lot of time."

"No," he said, drawing himself up to full height. "The nothingness is waiting for you there, so it will not impede us so long as we are going to it. It wants us there. Perhaps more specifically, it wants _you_ there, dear Sarah. And when you go to it, either you make the sacrifice and attempt to seal it again, or it will kill you. That is a certainty."

"Says you," said Sarah. "But instead of waiting around and talking about it, how about we go to it?"

Jareth let himself grow very, very still, and then he took Sarah's shoulder in his grasp.

"As you wish," he said close to her ear. Sarah felt the familiar lurching sensation, but this time it came without pain. They landed on one of the twisting roads of the town outside the castle, which looked almost nothing like the town Sarah had destroyed with the help of Hoggle, Didymus, and Ludo. It must have been the town the Berwyn helped to create, to match the castle that had taken over Jareth's.

Sarah frowned, peering into the dark. The sun, which should have still been in the sky, seemed to have sunk almost completely below the horizon. Though there was still light enough to see, she could not see clearly. In front of both of them, the darkness intensified.

"It's in there, isn't it?" Sarah asked, though she already knew the answer perfectly well. She hugged herself and shivered.

"Yes," answered Jareth, though he didn't need to.

"Well, come on then," she said quietly. Sarah took a step forward into the increasing darkness, allowing herself to be enveloped by it. It was worse than when she was little and her mother accidentally closed her bedroom door without remembering to turn on the night light. Back then, little Sarah imagined that there were things lurking in the darkness, though she had no proof except her own fear and the cruelly-intentioned stories from the older children up the street.

This darkness was not the darkness Sarah remembered from her childhood. For one, she knew for sure that something was lurking somewhere within.

"I wish I had a light," whispered Sarah into the darkness. Her own words were almost inaudible, though not because she whispered them so quietly. The darkness that clouded her eyes seemed to eat up her words as well; Sarah could only imagine that as they progressed through it, it would only get worse.

Her light glowed just barely above her head, illuminating almost nothing. Sarah only knew that Jareth was with her because she could feel him brush up against her every now and then; the light finally died as they took a few more steps into the darkness. The only thing she could clearly hear was her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

"Here," said Sarah, hearing her own muffled words as if from underwater. "Hold out your hand. We're going to get separated otherwise."

She reached out into the space where she thought he might be and fumbled around until she felt the hand that her held out. Sarah squeezed it once, trying to be reassuring, and she let it go. She picked apart the knot that held the red thread around her own wrist until she felt it start to unwind. As best she could in the dark, she knotted one end around her own wrist again, found Jareth's hand, and tied him to the other end in the same fashion.

"There, now we probably won't get separated."

Jareth felt the slightest of magic settle on him.

* * *

 **A/N**

 _Some of you_ should be feeling pretty gratified right about now. Stop reading my mind. (Just kidding.)


	19. Chapter 19

They walked together in silence for what felt like ages, but could have been seconds. Every now and then, Sarah of Jareth would feel the thread around their wrist jerk, a sure sign that one of them had stepped too far away. They would quickly step closer together, using the string as a guide until the distance was closed. With every step they took the darkness seemed to grow more and more oppressive, going as far as to seem to steal the very breath from Sarah's lungs.

A strange bubbling energy rose up in her, making her tremble slightly. _Anxiety,_ Sarah diagnosed herself. _This is anxiety_. She tried to think her way out of it, but to no avail; it was as if her body could sense that it was walking itself to her nonexistence. Her feet stopped, and she found that she couldn't force herself to take another step.

Jareth felt the tug at his wrist from the string and turned to follow it back to Sarah. As he thought might happen, she had stopped. The weight of the nothingness pressed down upon her; he wondered if she could feel her own mortality, now.

"Sarah," he said, reaching gently out into the dark. His gloved fingertips brushed her left cheek. She leaned into his touch as he cupped her face. He had already made his decision. "Sarah, I love you. Truly."

And then he kissed her, gently and fleeting. Perhaps it was cruel. Most likely it was selfish to burden her with the weight of his feelings whether or not she reciprocated them, to say his goodbye while denying her one of her own.

He pulled away and pressed his forehead against hers for a moment. He felt the ghost of her eyelashes against his face as she blinked, trying desperately to see him in the darkness.

"Jareth," she said, her voice carrying a warning. "What—"

"Goodbye, Sarah."

The Goblin King was not, by nature, a self-sacrificing creature. Time and history had both proven that he was loath to step into action, especially not at the expense of himself. But Sarah, damnable, precious Sarah, drove him to it. For her, he would sacrifice his hard-won land, his entire kingdom. For her, he would sacrifice himself.

Jareth pushed her out of his world and into her own.

* * *

The sudden light burned Sarah's eyes, and she hissed and threw a hand up to shield them from the sun. All of the sudden sensations—light, the heat from the sun on her skin, all of the _noise_ that she had somehow never noticed before—assaulted her at once.

She was no longer in the void.

Sarah shrieked in frustration, starling the single passerby on the sidewalk. She was back on the campus quad, which was largely abandoned. The first round of summer classes was over, but the second were bound to start any day; she had lost track of time while out of her own world. But because it was so unpopulated, nobody had seen her suddenly pop back into existence. At least, she hoped; it was the least of her worries at the moment. She tried to scrub the feeling of his lips on hers off of her face, but it wouldn't leave.

Angry tears threatened to spill out of her eyes as she stormed across her campus, heading in the direction of her apartment. By the time she got to her door, the tears were flowing freely. The door unlocked itself under her touch without her even noticing it, and when she stepped inside she saw that it had gone untouched for a few days, at least. Alyssa was gone, Sarah remembered. There was nobody around to hear her second shriek, though this time it was filled more with grief.

It had been _her_ duty to take care of the nothingness, to pacify it for however long it would let itself be pacified. _She_ had been the one determined to face it and come out the victor, but not only had he stolen that away from her, he threw himself away in the process.

"Conceited, selfish _brat!_ " She howled into the emptiness of her apartment. "You can't just send me away!"

Sarah wished hard to be returned to him, and though she could feel the edges of his world become more real the harder she wished, they never materialized. She was barred from returning—his doing, no doubt. She snarled at the realization.

After pacing around and trying desperately to return for several hours, the sharpest edges of her anger were blunted. Fear and grief took its place. She could guess well enough that the nothingness would leave her and her world alone, but it was at the cost of Jareth and his.

Her bedroom was no solace; it was still magically extended and contained the bed that Jareth had conjured for himself. The fact that it existed still was probably a good thing and probably meant that he was still alive, but Sarah was still too frantic to really consider it. Instead, the sight of it only made her feel worse. She decided that she couldn't stay in the apartment, the place where she last remembered him being before everything went wrong in his world. She would have to go back to her parents' house, the place she told Alyssa she'd be. They'd welcome her, of course.

Sarah decided that there she would be free to plot ways to return to Jareth and kick both his and the nothingness's asses.

She found her keys and threw clothes into a bag, and left her apartment in a whirlwhind of emotion, and she drove home in much the same state. Robert and Karen were both surprised to see her, but didn't complain; Toby was the most excited of all.

Sarah did her best to shove her more unpleasant emotions away, but also made sure to escape as soon as possible to her room. The lie she told her family was that she was tired, but she knew without a doubt that there was no way she would be sleeping that night. Though her anger and general frenzy had left her tired, she was still far too worried to even consider sleeping.

Instead, she tore through her own room at a furious pace, reorganizing and cleaning. Sarah dumped out the things she brought with her on the floor and put those away, too.

But she could only keep herself distracted for so long; Sarah knew that she would need help. She just didn't know where she might be able to get it from.

 _Belinda!_ Sarah thought. _She might know what to do_. Belinda, in the short amount of time Sarah had known her, always seemed to know things that should probably have been out of her purview. It wouldn't have surprised Sarah at all if the witch somehow knew everything that had happened while Sarah was gone.

A tiny slip of paper, folded into a little triangle, fell out of the pockets of one of Sarah's pair of jeans. Sarah sat on the floor of her old bedroom and painstakingly unfolded it, looking for anything to further distract herself. Written on it, in wide, curling script, was a phone number.

Sarah looked at the jeans the piece of paper had fallen from and tried to remember the last time she wore them. She vaguely remembered wearing them the last time she saw Belinda, and considered it a miracle that she hadn't quite gotten around to washing them yet. Written below the number, in much smaller but still flowing script, was _you'll find this when you need it_.

It sounded exactly like something that Belinda would say. Sarah glanced up at the clock on her bedside table and saw that the rest of her family had probably gone to bed. She had been frantically moving things around in her room for three hours, making it just a few minutes past midnight.

Sarah took off her shoes and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen phone in her stocking feet, trying not to wake Karen in particular. Her stepmother had instituted strict rules when Sarah was a teenager about when the phone was to be used, and past midnight certainly did not comply with them. She didn't know if those rules were still in effect or not, but thought it best not to test it.

The phone rang. And rang. Sarah cradled it between her ear and shoulder, fiddling with the coiled cord with her hands. Eventually Belinda answered, sounding like she was mid yawn.

"Hello, Sarah," the witch said. "I figured that you would call eventually."

For a second Sarah was taken aback that Belinda knew it was her on the other end of the line; then she reasoned that Belinda probably had caller ID, and her knowledge was not supernatural in origin.

"Hi, Belinda—"

"How has your adventure been? I hope everything went well, but I guess it hasn't. Otherwise I don't think you'd be calling." Belinda's end of the line crackled, and Sarah wondered for a second if she was making something at her tiny stove.

"It's been…" Sarah scrunched up her face. "It's not important. I'm in _way_ over my head here, and Jareth—oh, Jareth…" Sadness crept into her voice. "Well, he's as boneheaded as always." Silence poured out of the receiver, and Sarah dropped the phone cord to hold the headset. "Well, the thing that _I_ was supposed to handle, it was supposed to eat up our world, but it's trapped in his now. And he took it upon himself to be absolutely insufferable and _completely ignore_ what I said I wanted, so he sealed it up with him. I don't know what's going to happen to him, or his world, or his people."

"And let me guess," said Belinda, as if this was a story she had heard dozens of times before, "he cast you out of his world, and now you can't get back?"

"You're very perceptive," said Sarah.

"Well, just use the gift I gave you," Belinda said, as it was the most obvious solution possible. "I _did_ say that you should use it when you have no other options, if I'm remembering correctly. Sounds to me like you have no other options."

Sarah huffed, and wondered what, exactly, Belinda thought the string was or could do. It was just a string! It had served well enough tethering them together in the darkness, but…

"It's gone," said Sarah. "It must have slipped off my wrist when he threw me out. I definitely used it to tie our wrists together, but it broke, or fell off, or _something_."

Belinda laughed so loudly Sarah had to pull the phone away from her ear. "That string doesn't _break_ , Sarah. It can't ever be broken, just hidden. Or stretched, or… Whatever. The point is that it isn't gone. Maybe you just can't see it."

Sarah almost, _almost_ told Belinda not to be ludicrous. She couldn't see the thread binding her and Jareth together, and neither could she feel it. She thought that surely, at least one of those senses wouldn't have failed her.

But then she remembered who she was talking to, and the nature of the being at the other end of the thread. The ludicrous was the ordinary in the world Sarah had found herself in; ordinary girls could be descended from magical kings, and wishes could sometimes come true. So why couldn't an unassuming little thread have a magic of its own? Belinda's certainty was infectious.

"Well," said Belinda, sounding bored on the other end of the line, "what are you going to do now?"

Sarah twined the phone cord around one index finger as she thought. Jareth had clearly barred her from his world, which meant that he did not want her there. That meant to her, of course, that she had to be there.

Besides, it was still her mess to clean up, if only because of her family tree.

"I'm going to try again," Sarah said.

"Cool," said Belinda, audibly stifling a yawn. The line went dead.


	20. Chapter 20

Sarah huffed and hung up her own phone a little too aggressively to be strictly within the confines of Karen's noise limitation. She was sure that Belinda had somehow been helpful, but she didn't know how just yet. At any rate, she still wasn't sure how she was supposed to get back to Jareth and somehow stop the nothingness.

 _I have to get back to him and defeat the nothingness,_ Sarah thought. The absurdity of her own thought struck her suddenly; how could nothingness be defeated? But the other gods had been certain that's what it was. Jareth had been certain, but…

 _Jareth is not infallible_ , Sarah realized. _And I bet that those other gods aren't either._ They could all have been wrong, at least a little bit. It was at least a possibility, even if she wasn't necessarily confident in it.

Ever since her run in with the door guards in the labyrinth, Sarah found that she quite liked logic puzzles. She was certain that she had picked correctly with the door puzzle; they did say _certain_ death after all, which Sarah tended to believe would have been instant evisceration. Since she had simply fallen into the clutches of the Helping Hands, and they _had_ offered her a choice in directions, that was by no means certain doom. The silliness in the choice had been hers alone. What was more was that Hoggle came to find her. It made sense, in the same way that lots of things in Jareth's world made sense.

This nothingness did not make sense. It had been bothering her ever since Jareth introduced the idea, but she had been willing to believe in how adamant he was in his belief in it. Sarah saw where that got him.

"Okay, Sarah," she whispered in the dim light of the kitchen. "Think through this. It's just another puzzle. The nothingness was trapped behind the Disk." That felt true; the area behind the Disk had been empty, and the Disk itself had been cracked in half as if something had torn through it. But…

"For something to tear through it," Sarah said, testing the words as she said them, "it can't have been nothing. The thing behind the Disk _had_ to have been something."

It was the only thing that made sense, really, even taking into account all of the magic that could have messed with what she knew of the laws of nature. _Who was it that said nature abhors a vacuum?_ Sarah wondered, but then shook her head. _It doesn't matter. Nothing, by nature, cannot exist because if it existed then it would be something_. _And if it's something, then it can be dealt with._

The logic made sense to her in the same way that all magical things made sense. Sarah smiled, the ghost of a plan taking shape in her mind. She had learned through her own magic and observation while in the labyrinth that things almost always tended to be exactly what a person expected them to be. It was how she got her magic to work most of the time, and after all, hadn't Jareth pretty much operated on that principle? She had expected him to be scary, and he had delivered on that, at least.

 _I was frightening…_

He believed it, too.

Sarah's smile grew wider.

"Jareth, you fool," she murmured, looking at the wrist that had previously been encircled by her end of the red thread. "I told you I'd find a way around it. Didn't I tell you that my will is as strong as yours? I'm coming back for you," she said softly, kissing the fleshy underside of her wrist. The faintest sensation brushed against her lips; it was not her skin. Sarah closed her eyes and raised her left hand, touching the thin thread with her index finger.

"Found you," Sarah said without opening her eyes. She took hold of the thread and gave it a sharp tug. Somewhere down the line there was resistance, but she couldn't tell if it was because of Jareth or the walls he had thrown up to keep her out.

She ran her hand down the thread, and when she could reach no further, she took a step. If she had been thinking about it—if she had been expecting it—she should have hit the kitchen wall, the one where the phone and corkboard hung, the one where they hung Toby's childhood masterpieces. But she wasn't expecting to slap her forehead against a stick-figure portrait of his family, Sarah included, so she did not. It was both that simple and that complicated.

Sarah stepped not into a void, but into suffocating darkness. If there had been anything to hear, she could not have. Now that she thought she had it all figured out, she could see how everybody had mistaken it for a void, mistaken it for nothingness for so long. It was easy to do.

But it was incorrect, for the most part. After all, Sarah was in it and she still existed. Her tether still existed. Somewhere in the middle of it, Jareth and all of the goblins existed, too. She was sure of it, and that was all that she needed.

 _Here we go, feet_ , she thought, putting one in front of the other until she was certain that she was moving. She kept her hand on the thread, tight enough to keep it from slipping between her fingers, but loose enough that it could move with her. It was straight, and unbowed, meaning that there was no slack between them. If Sarah had thought it sentient, she might have thought that it was as eager for her to get back to her Goblin King as she was. But she didn't think that, so the thread was just a thread, even if it was magical.

She followed it for what felt like days, not bothering to open her eyes because even when she did, there was no difference. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and the only thing to feel were the clothes against her skin and the thread in her hand. Jareth was at the end of it. That knowledge kept her going.

* * *

The curious thing about being consumed by the void, Jareth decided, was that he didn't feel like he was losing himself. Sure, all of his senses were cut off, but he could still think. He still _felt_ like himself, but the edges of where he ended and where the void began were slightly blurred. He dismayed to realize that the longer he sat in the darkness, the more they seemed to blue.

This was the fate that his kindred had left him to. This was a fate that he had refused Sarah. Knowing the second made it easier for him to come to terms with the first. Had he been a more forgiving creature, he might have even been able to find some sort of peace. Instead, Jareth could only hope that if or when he was reborn, it would be in a position to extract vengeance from those who had wronged him. And Sarah, too, he supposed.

He was so distracted in his plans for wrathful comeuppance that he failed to notice the faint tugging at his wrist coming from the thread that Sarah had tied. When even those thoughts grew stale and tired, he allowed his mind to go blank. Sleep, or as close as he could get to it, would be a welcome sort of oblivion.

* * *

Sarah almost stumbled over Jareth, who seemed to be in something of a catatonic state. Her foot actually did collide with what felt like his shin, but for a multitude of reasons she was unwilling to go groping about in the dark.

"Hey," she said, nudging him. He didn't reply, or at least not that she could sense. It was possible that even if he was awake, he couldn't feel or hear her at all. Seeing was out of the question for her, and he had been in the darkness much longer. Sarah followed the thread from her wrist to his, and tried to take his pulse; she knew intimately that he had one, but she didn't know what rate it should be going at. Red Cross first aid training only covered so much, and the care of godlike mythical beings wasn't on the syllabus.

"Just as well you're sleeping. It lets me get away with all of the dashing heroics," she said, wondering if she should have saved that line to say to him when he was more conscious. It would have been delicious to hold over his head.

Sarah stood and faced what she hoped was the middle. The castle should have been around here somewhere, under normal circumstances. Though Sarah doubted it was as dire as Jareth thought it was, she knew well enough that these were not normal circumstances.

"Listen up," she projected into the darkness, almost shouting so that she could properly hear herself. The darkness seemed to listen; she wondered if this was the first time anybody had ever thought to address it. _That would go a long way it making it believe that it was nothing_ , she thought, and almost came close to feeling pity for it. "Just because this bonehead here was so willing to sacrifice all of himself doesn't mean that I am. But I _am_ the scion of Berwyn, as the world has recently made me aware, and I understand that it comes with certain... responsibilities. I'm here to make good on them."

Sarah dropped the thread in her hand and stood to her full height. Because her hands were shaking, she placed them on her chest and imagined what her sacrifice would look like. Glowing, sparling, maybe—Sarah had always had a weakness for soft, glittering things—and warm, probably. _Yes,_ thought Sarah. _That will do nicely_.

As her hands pulled away from her chest, something came with it. It was small and in the shape of an orb, and generally exactly as Sarah had imagined it. It cut through even the darkness that had swallowed both her and Jareth. She looked down to see that he wasn't quite asleep; his eyes were cracked and he looked like he was watching her, though he didn't seem to be aware of it.

 _I wonder if he heard me call him a bonehead?_ Sarah smiled to herself as she imagined his indignation.

"So here it is," she said, cupping the light in her hands. "My sacrifice to you."

Sarah removed her hands, and it hung in the air before her. The darkness probed at the light; shadowy little tendrils snaked out to caress it before more and more wrapped around it once they found that it did not seem to be a threat. The darkness—Sarah refused to ever again call it nothingness—swallowed even that light whole, too.

"My mortality," whispered Sarah, and this time her voice echoed all around them.

* * *

 **A/N**

Horror vacui


	21. Chapter 21

For a very long time, the darkness had not been acknowledged as anything. It was something, of course, as all thing must be; the problem was that nobody knew what, exactly, it was. They called it nothing, and so it did its best to be that nothing.

Sarah was the first to give it something, to tell it that it could be. She made it mortal. Whatever it did with that gift—or curse—was up to it.

She watched as it swallowed the light of her mortality, watched as it became the thing that it consumed. Sarah doubted that it would die immediately, but at least it could, now. It had gone from thinking it was nothing to knowing that it was mortal, and like all mortal things, it feared its own death.

"You should probably go now, if you don't mind," said Sarah. "You've caused a lot of trouble here and I don't think that you can ever be forgiven, but I'll leave you your peace if you leave me mine. And everybody else's," she added hastily.

The light it had leeched from the sky returned so that Sarah could see that there even was a sky, and earth, and little smudges of things in the distance that might have been rocks. She thought she could still see the darkness out of the corner of her eye, though it was retreating. Sarah turned her back to it and crouched down to look at Jareth.

He looked like he was asleep, and his chest rose and fell slowly with his breathing. If he really was asleep, that was probably for the best; if she could get him out of his lands without him seeing them, that would be even better. The darkness had stripped them completely, taking all of the life with it that it could, as far as Sarah could tell. Jareth was still alive, of course, and she hoped that meant that her old friends and the rest of the goblins were, too. Somewhere.

The dead grass under her feet crumbled under her weight.

"Hey," she breathed. "I don't think I'm strong enough to pick you up, so you're going to have to walk out of here yourself."

She tugged and pushed and prodded him until his eyelids fluttered.

"You're not sleeping beauty, Jareth. Don't make me kiss you," she threatened. As expected, her threat did absolutely nothing. He remained sleeping, or in some sort shock that she couldn't seem to shake him out of. Sarah sighed and placed both hands on his shoulders.

"I wish we were back at home. _My_ home," she specified, in case she needed to. Expectations were tricky things, she had learned, and it was best to be careful with them. Sarah closed her eyes as she felt the falling sensation occasioned by magical travel, and only cracked one open when she felt herself still again. Jareth, who had not yet really opened his eyes, kept them closed.

Her empty apartment greeted her; it was only a shame that they ended up sprawled across the divide between her tiny kitchen and what passed as the living room. It wasn't the most comfortable, and Sarah wondered how he managed to still be asleep. She leaned over him so that her hair brushed his face.

Which naturally, was when he decided to wake up. His angled eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and he brushed her hair away.

"Sarah…" he said, "what…?"

He looked dazed, and confused, which Sarah thought might be expected. She didn't know what had happened to him when he was in the darkness, but it couldn't have been pleasant. And if the aftereffects of the darkness were anything like the aftereffects of the dreamweaver spiders, he would be confused for a while; she had almost no answers to offer him like he had for her. Sarah reached up and tugged the seat cushion off of her kitchen chair and worked it under his head.

"How do you feel?" she asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question. What had once been his home had been reduced to rubble and dead earth; his people were scattered and probably just as badly off as him. Though Sarah had dealt what would eventually become a mortal wound, the darkness was still alive somewhere.

"How are you alive? How am _I_ alive? Why did you come back?"

 _Ah_ , thought Sarah, _I should probably tell him the truth about the darkness._ He didn't know—couldn't possibly know—and the fact that he was both alive and not swallowed in the darkness was probably a shock. _And we'll have to discuss that self-sacrificing move, too._

"Of course I wasn't going to just leave you there," she said softly. "The nothingness wasn't really nothingness, you see. It was bugging me for a while, but everybody else seemed so sure that I didn't want to question it." Sarah smiled gently and ignored the way his frown deepened. "That's a lesson I learned from _you_ by the way: don't take everything for granted. Well, I didn't this time."

He tried to sit up, and Sarah leaned back so that he could have room. Jareth rested his elbow on the thin seat cushion and leaned so that he was closer to eye level with Sarah. He didn't look angry, not at her, or maybe at anything. She couldn't quite place the expression on his face.

"But it believed it was the void, so it acted like the void. All of those horrible expectations—wishes—we had about it fed into it, I suppose. Whatever it was, it believed it was nothing. So all I had to do was make it something," she explained, as if it really was that simple. "I don't think that a life would have ever satisfied it. That would have only made it feel more like nothing. But," she added hastily as he sat up even further. "There's something you should know before you try to go back."

"Yes, Sarah?"

"There's… not much there. Everything's been sort of sucked out of it. I mean, there's earth and sky, but I'm not sure about water. And the goblins… I'm not entirely sure about them, either. If you're okay, then I believe they should be, too." Except believe wasn't quite the right word; Sarah could only _hope_ that they were undamaged.

"Clever Sarah," Jareth said hollowly after several minutes of silence. "To have figured all of that out." Jareth stood, but slower than Sarah had ever seen him move before. His shoulders bowed in and he turned his back on her. "What was is that you sacrificed?"

Sarah grimaced, knowing that he couldn't see her. She hadn't put too much thought into her sacrifice other than it _worked_ and she had managed to save what she could. That was all that had mattered in the moment, but standing outside of it… She wouldn't call it a mistake, exactly, the way wishing Toby away had been. It hadn't exactly been well thought out, either, at least not for her. It worked out for everybody else, she was sure, but…

"I don't want to tell you right now," said Sarah, bracing herself for a fight. He didn't turn around to face her, or even really acknowledge that she had spoken. "It isn't that I won't, of course." He didn't move. Nothing about him gave any indication that he had internalized what she said. Sarah took a deep breath and prepared to explain herself.

"Very well," he said, and made his way into her bedroom. Sarah stood, and only followed him after a moment's pause. The weak light form the moon and the streetlights filtered through the tiny window in Sarah's magically expanded bedroom and cast him in shadows. He still stood without all of the solemn rigidity that Sarah had become accustomed to, and he still didn't turn around to look at her. "If you don't mind, Sarah, I'd like some time to myself."

He stepped into _her_ bedroom, and he shut _her_ door on her, while she tried to not gape from where she stood. Sarah didn't mind, exactly. She knew the value of some quality personal time, and she could, to a degree, understand that he had been through a lot. They both had.

But what she didn't understand was how he was shutting her out. Sarah frowned, but knew that there wouldn't be much success in pushing it. There never was, and it would only serve to push them into a fight. They were both a bit raw from the darkness and the tumult of even just getting to it—Sarah knew that she was—and any fight between the two of them _now_ would certainly not end well.

"Okay," she said, hearing the waver in her own voice. But she didn't have time to stand around and feel sorry for herself, or even Jareth. Her parents didn't even know that she left the house, much less that she had gone on a rather quick magical journey, defeated an ancient evil, and dragged an almost-god out of his own stupor. It would be best to get back to her old home, and quickly. Sarah sighed and reached out for the magic that had settled just below her skin.

In the space between two heartbeats she was back in her old room, with all of her old things and the bag she had packed not too long ago. She'd make up some excuse and go home tomorrow night, she decided. For the time being, she needed some time to herself as well, as far away from magic as she could get. Sarah curled up into her old bed and slept as soundly as she could.

She left her bedroom light on, having enough of darkness; she wondered if Jareth did the same, back at her apartment.

When she woke, the sun made her bedroom light pointless and she could hear people moving around downstairs. Robert would no doubt be overcooking the eggs, while Toby would be busy trying to convince his mother that his favorite sugary cereal was a real breakfast. Though she didn't live with them anymore, she had witnessed enough of these mornings to know their routine.

It made her feel sick.

As far as she knew, she had made herself immortal. These mornings, with their practiced ease and familiarity, would pass her by. Her family would pass her by. If it all worked out, and the darkness was given her mortality, everything would. It hit her, for the first time, that she had sacrificed a lot more than just her mortality; she had sacrificed her family and friends, as well. Sarah spread out in her bed and tried to focus on feeling the sheets against her skin, committing every sense that she had to her memory. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away.

 _I can't go down looking like I've been crying,_ she told herself. _This will not be the last time that I see them_. _I don't have to say goodbye right now_.

It didn't do her much good, but it gave her enough strength to get up and ready for the morning. When she finally made it downstairs, she wore a smile.

"I think I'm going back home this evening," she told her father while spreading jam on her toast. "There are some things that I need to take care of. Next time I come down, I promise I'll stay longer."

Robert halfheartedly tried to convince his daughter to stay, while Karen advised she take the most logical course of action. Sarah smiled and promised another later visit, and then promised to take Toby to the park. Toby, who had won the battle for chocolate flavored cereal against Karen, was ecstatic; it meant that he wouldn't have to accompany his mother while she went grocery shopping.

It was all so achingly _normal_. Sarah reminded herself that she hadn't left it behind quite yet.

Sarah walked with Toby to the same park she used to recite her plays at, and was unsurprised to find it unchanged. The little pond was still there, with the little bridge, and the swing sets were tucked away behind the trees with the other playground equipment. Toby plopped himself down in the large sandbox, which held more playground mulch than it did sand, and began constructing little buildings.

Sarah watched him, largely ignoring the book she had brought with her. As soon as he decided he was done, Toby leaned back to admire his handiwork. After a few moments of contemplation, he knocked it all down and began again, bringing an abandoned plastic bucket filled with water over from the communal spigot to temporarily cement his creations.

An idea began working its way through her head.


	22. Chapter 22

The labyrinth could be rebuilt, of course, but not even Sarah's hubris allowed her to think that she might be able to do it by herself. No, she would need help. And if the people she had in mind would agree, she knew just who to ask. Jareth wasn't one of them; though she didn't actually want to leave him alone, she didn't want to force him to look at what had happened to his world. It would be worse still if she couldn't actually accomplish what she hoped to.

Though she was itching to put her half-formed plan into action, Sarah didn't rush Toby along. She waited until he was hungry enough to tear them away from the park and walked him back home. She made sandwiches for them and let Toby snack on his favorite pretzels while he watched cartoons on the television. Karen should be home soon enough, though her father wouldn't be for a while, and she didn't want to leave without saying goodbye, at least.

When Karen came home, both siblings were enlisted to help put away the groceries and start on dinner. Sarah knew that he father would be home not too long after—he had promised not to stay late at work before he left that morning—and went upstairs to put all of her things away to take home.

Except she doubted that she'd actually make it back to her apartment that evening. The plan, as far as she had thought it through, was to drive back, park her car, and then get back into what had once been the labyrinth. She didn't feel the wall that Jareth had put up when he threw her out the last time, and she had felt for it a few times throughout the day. When she got back in, she would see what she could find, or if she could even find anything. She'd had a thread anchoring her back to Jareth, and she owed her success to that entirely.

Later, when everything was calm again, she would have to remind herself to thank Belinda. Somehow. Sarah wasn't sure how to thank a person for doing what Belinda had done for her. A card or a phone call didn't quite seem appropriate.

The few things she had brought with her initially were easy enough to find and throw into the duffel bag she brought them in. There wasn't much else to do but to wait for her father to come home and eat dinner so that she could make her way back to the labyrinth.

 _I could wish him home_ , she thought, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she shook her head at her own thought. _That would cause too much trouble_ , she decided. _I'm an adult. I can wait a little bit._

'A little bit' turned out to be three hours, and when Robert returned home sheepishly, he had more than just the wrath of his wife to face. Sarah was also waiting, irritated only because a delay at dinner meant a delay in setting things right. Eventually, the family dinner was eaten and everything cleaned up enough to be satisfactory, and Sarah saw no more delays in her future.

"Goodbye, everyone," she said, bag in hand. "I hope I'll be able to come back down soon—and for longer," she added, knowing that he short say was probably more confusing to her family than anything. "I just need to be getting back now." She didn't elaborate on where back was.

"Goodbye, Sarah," Robert and Karen said at the same time. Karen gave her the lightest little peck on the cheek, while Robert clapped a hand on her shoulder. Toby squeezed her legs in the most ferocious bear hug he could manage.

"Bye, Sarah," he said.

Sarah hugged all three back in turn, and walked into the night. The drive back felt much longer than normal, but only because she was so anxious to get back she was all but jumping out of her skin. When she finally pulled into the parking space allotted to her in the apartment's parking lot, Sarah didn't even bother to take her things up to her unit before she closed her eyes and wished herself back into the land that had, once upon a time, housed a labyrinth.

"I probably should have locked my car door," she thought to herself, frowning, when she opened her eyes again. The desolate expanse of dead grass and dry earth reminded her that her own world was not quite to desolate. And _that_ reminded her that it might have only been that way because of Jareth and his ridiculous sacrifice. _Really_ , she thought _, between the two of us, there's no contest_. Sacrificing only a part of oneself was not nearly as bad as sacrificing the whole. Laid out like that, it made sense to her.

She knew Jareth wouldn't see it the same way. He was as stubborn and self-assured as she was sure no creature had any right to be, not even an ex-god, and she didn't really see that changing any time soon. Besides, as much as she knew it drove her up the wall, she also was willing to admit that it was one of his very peculiar charms.

They had more in common than she would ever readily admit.

But at the moment, had she even been able to, there was nobody around to admit it _to_. The land was just as barren as the last time she had seen it, in the moments between when the darkness retreated and she had left with Jareth. Nothing had changed; she hadn't expected it to.

Except there _was_ something, it was just so small and still she hadn't seen it the first time. Sarah jogged the few steps to it and crouched down to look at it closer.

"Oh, you poor thing," she murmured, sliding a hand under the goblin's head. It was breathing, that much she could tell, but she didn't know if it should look quite so swollen all over, or if the green spots in its fur were meant to be there or not.

Sarah stood back up and held the goblin in her arms, wondering if others would be nearby; they didn't exactly seem like solitary creatures. As she looked—really looked this time, looking for tiny little discrepancies in the landscape—she was able to pick a few more out. One had brittle fur that blended in with the dead grass on the ground.

It was this one that approached her. Sarah had never been particularly adept at games of I Spy as a child, so she almost jumped out of her skin when a voice floated up to her from the ground at her feet.

"Peach girl," it said, giving the right leg of her jeans a hearty tug when she stared at it instead of responding. "I said _peach girl_ , you're back." It squinted up at her as if not sure if she was real or not. Given the minor bit of unreality that had just occurred, she couldn't quite find it in herself to blame it.

"Yes," she said. "Do you think that you might be able to help me out?"

The goblin cocked its head at her, as if almost deciding to decline. Sarah lowered herself to her knees so that she could be at eye level with the goblin and shifted the goblin in her arms so that she could hold out a free hand to the one standing before her.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Muck," the goblin said, eyeing her hand as if Sarah was offering her a snake. Sarah tucked her hand away, seeing that Muck wasn't going to shake. Muck straightened some of her fur out and eyed Sarah again. "I think I will help."

"Thank you," Sarah said, smiling beatifically at the goblin. "I'm wondering if you can help me find three of my old friends. They live here, but I haven't seen them in a very long time. They're—"

"I know who they are," Muck interrupted. "Only know where one of them is, though. Follow me."

Sarah nodded and stood as Muck scampered away, leading her across what had once been the plains—at least Sarah thought it had once been the plains. With any previously existing structures now demolished, and even the forests leveled, Sarah didn't really have any way to get her bearings.

The little goblin in her arms eventually woke up, and it squirmed so intensely that Sarah almost dropped it.

"Sorry," Sarah said, trying to calm it. "But I didn't want to just leave you behind." It eventually gave up, resigning itself to her embrace with an indignant screech. Like a very few of the creatures she had met in her very first journey through the labyrinth, it didn't quite seem capable of anything she recognized as human speech.

Whatever it said amused Muck, who snorted out her laughter but didn't turn around to enlighten Sarah. After a little while, Muck stopped in her tracks to sniff the air. Sarah almost tripped over her; Muck looked back up at her apologetically.

"Hard to figure out where I am," she said simply. Sarah only nodded, letting the little goblin out of her arms when it fussed again. It fled to Muck, who allowed it to sit on her head. After a moment of deliberation, Muck took a sharp left turn and dove behind a low pile of what looked like rubble.

"Here," she called out, drawing Sarah closer. The little goblin on Muck's head squealed.

"Hoggle!" Sarah gasped, dropping to her knees to better see her old friend. Unlike herself, he hadn't seemed to change in all of the years they had been separated. He was still short, and gnarled, and most importantly, he looked just as grumpy as she remembered him being.

"Sarah? Haven't seen _yous_ in a while, and you show up now of all times."

"Well," said Sarah, "I know that I haven't been a very good friend, lately, but I couldn't just leave all of you when I know you're in a bad situation." Hoggle harrumphed and crossed his arms, using the pile of rubble to pull himself out of his sitting position. "I was wondering if you might help me fix some of this," she said, gesturing to the landscape around her. "And Muck here is the one who found you. If she's still willing, she's going to help me find Ludo and Sir Didymus, too."

Sarah cast an imploring, questioning glance over to Muck, who rubbed her paws together nervously. She didn't have much experience in dealing with humans, least of all ones like Sarah. After the girl's run through the labyrinth, some of the other goblins had wondered how the three she had befriended had so easily been taken in. Muck thought that possibly she could understand after actually meeting her. Berwyn had irrevocably shaped their world one way—Muck had a feeling that Sarah was about to shape it in another.

Muck only nodded in response to Sarah's unasked question, and once Hoggle had also indicated that he was coming along, she sniffed the air again. She thought she had an idea of where the beast and the knight might have been, but after the darkness stole all of their senses, it had also shaken them up quite a bit. Nothing was quite where it should be

Hoggle and Sarah conversed as they walked, slower this time so that he could keep up with them. They both carefully avoided anything that could have led them to discuss their conspicuous lack of communication for six whole years. Since there wasn't much else to discuss, they frequently lapsed into silence. Muck, who had grown up in the goblin court—as much as it could be called a court—disliked silence.

"King was here before you were, peach girl," she said during a particularly long and awkward pause. "Left quick though."

"Oh, really?" Sarah had half hoped that he would not look upon the destruction of his land. She knew it was a feeble hope, that to think he wouldn't was borderline foolish. Still, she had hoped. She remembered when Karen had first walked into her life; just before she and her father got married, they had moved from the tiny house Sarah shared with her father into the house in which they still lived. Sarah had gotten to see her old house once, when the owners after them were selling it. Sarah had graduated high school by that time, and she hadn't told anybody that she was going to see it.

Curiosity drove her to it, but the change drove her away. The owners after her had repainted everything and knocked down a wall or two. They uprooted the daffodils Sarah and her father had planted over the mass grave of all of Sarah's failed goldfish. It was their right, of course, but it had hurt somewhat to see that somebody had gone and changed all of her early childhood memories around.

She knew, of course, that seeing a changed childhood home and seeing a destroyed kingdom were nothing alike. She knew that he had spent a lot more time in _his_ home than she had spent in hers, by virtue of his being an immortal almost-god. So she also knew that his grief was no doubt deeper than hers had been, and she was sad that he had inflicted the sight on himself.

Silence reigned once more; Sarah was wondering how Jareth was doing, while Hoggle was busy not caring, and Much was unsuccessfully searching for ways to continue the conversation.

And then, in the distance, a huge mound of orange fur appeared. Sarah smiled, knowing who it must be; she doubted that whatever Ludo was, it was too abundant in the labyrinth. The world hadn't exactly been made for him the last time she'd seen him.

"Ludo!" She shouted, waving her hands in the air above her head. "Come on Hoggle, Muck!" Sarah took off running towards her lumbering beast of a friend, only sliwing when she saw a second, and then a third shape appear beside him.

"Sir Didymus! Ambrosias!" Sarah laughed, and turned behind her to urge Hoggle and Muck on. Ludo grunted out her name, surprised, while Didymus stared at her in shock, struck as theatrically mute as he had been when Sarah had asked to simply be allowed to cross the bridge.

Sarah pressed her face into Ludo's orange fur as she hugged him.

"I'm so happy to see you again," she said. "All of you. Truly." She didn't ask how they had been, not because she didn't care, but because she was afraid of what they might say. Sarah was nervous that they might blame her for the darkness, for being the latest in a long bloodline that had brought nothing but destruction and ruin to their home. Most of her knew that they wouldn't, but it couldn't quiet the small part of her that had doubts.

"It is good to see you as well, my lady. We had feared the worst." Sir Didymus's epithet for her brought a small smile to her face. She had missed his overblown was of speaking.

"Me, too," she said honestly. "I thought you—all of you—had… I was afraid that something horrible happened to all of you."

"No, my lady. We have persevered."

"Of course you have," she said, depositing a light kiss on Didymus's and then Hoggle's head.

"You ain't thinking of staying here, are you?" Sarah had always remembered Hoggle as being the most grave of all of her friends made in the labyrinth, and he lived up to that memory now. "There's nothing good here anymore. You had better get out while you can."

"Well," Sarah said, folding her hands together. "That's something I'd like everybody's help with, if that's okay."

"Sure, Sarah," Ludo grated out. Judging by Sir Didymus's nodding, he spoke for at least two of them. Hoggle looked at her warily.

"I want to try and rebuild this place, as best as we all can. But now how it was when it was a labyrinth, and not how it was when that horrid king changed things. Hoggle," she said, turning to him, "do you happen to know what this place looked like, originally?"

"'Course, Sarah," he said, rubbing his forehead. "But that's gonna take a lot of work."

"I know," she said, with a smile. "But all of you deserve your homes back, too. Ludo, will you stay with me and call the rocks?"

"Sure," he said, his ears swaying with the force of his nod.

"And you, Didymus, would you and Ambrosias go out and find as many goblins as you can? I don't want them to all get lost, and any extra hands we can have would be great."

"Of course, my lady." He hopped up on his loyal steed's back and doffed his cap towards her.

Didymus rode off, leaving Ludo, Hoggle, and Sarah in his wake. Sarah turned to the other two and smiled lightly.

"Looks like it's time to get to work," she said.


	23. Chapter 23

Even with the aid of magic, it was backbreaking labor. Ludo sang the ground into submission until Sarah's ears rang with his voice and she suggested that they all take a break. Hoggle only half grumbled about wasting time, but Ludo was happy enough to plop down onto the ground. Sarah followed his example.

She should probably have known, given her general proclivity for falling and the way the earth had been reshaped, that something was going to happen. Sarah crashed through the dry earth and landed hard on her back. Groaning, she rolled onto her stomach to better assess her situation.

"Ugh," was all that she was able to force out of her mouth. Though the light from the sun above changed it greatly, Sarah doubted that she'd ever be unable to recognize the necropolis that had rested under the castle not too long ago. The castle above it had been completely razed, and Sarah suspected that it stretched out from what had once been under the Berwyn's monstrous castle anyway.

"Sarah?" Ludo called, his orange head poking over the hole Sarah had crashed through. Sarah waved up at Ludo and Hoggle to show that she was okay—or as okay as one could be.

"Wouldn't have exactly minded never seeing this place again," she said, shuddering to herself. Memories of the corpses not too far below her feet kept her where she stood, though she doubted that any of them were going to stand up and start walking around. No, they had all finally been put to rest.

For _her_ , at least; the scars of Berwyn's reign clearly still remained. What remained of the necropolis was only one of them.

Without her asking, Ludo sang a rudimentary rock staircase into existence. Sarah climbed back up into the sunlight and shook her head.

"Is there a way to get rid of that at all? Can we level that entirely?"

Ludo shrugged and Hoggle grunted something about not needing "no stinkin' crypt anymore," to which Sarah heartily agreed. She almost wondered that he hadn't ever mentioned it during her first run, but then the labyrinth had looked different anyway, and he probably didn't have much of a cause to. Some of her biggest concerns were oubliettes and Cleaners, not crypts and corpses.

As soon as everybody was clear, Ludo went to work. His howling still made Sarah's ears ring, and Hoggle pretended that he was completely unaffected by squinting into the horizon. The ground rumbled and shook under their feet, until Hoggle, ever the self-proclaimed coward, clung to one of Sarah's legs. As soon as the movement stopped, he leaped back and crossed his arms again.

"Oh, don't act so tough," Sarah said cheerily as she patted Ludo on the arm. "You'll make Ludo think you're afraid of him." Though her legs felt like gelatin, she remained standing. Ludo had managed to cave in the entire underground structure, though it left a jagged hole in the earth deeper than she imagined it could have possibly gone.

 _Perhaps there were entire floors below what I saw_ , she thought, and shuddered.

The earth that Ludo overturned looked dark and loamy, and though Sarah was no gardener, she knew it was better for growing things than the dusty, dry dirt that had been caked over top of it.

"Ludo," she said, putting a hand on his solid arm. "Can you keep doing that? Turn up all of the dark dirt that you can. I'm going to be right back." Sarah stretched up on her tiptoes to give Ludo a hug, and leaned down to kiss Hoggle on the top of his head. With a single wish, she was gone in the next instant.

Even in the old labyrinth, Sarah doubted that things could spring from the earth unbidden—at least, probably not by her. Jareth might have had that power, but he wasn't there, and Sarah doubted that he would want to go back any time soon. Muck sad that he appeared and disappeared almost as quickly, which didn't sound to Sarah like he liked what he saw. Sarah wouldn't—didn't—either.

But after everything he had been through, it struck her as strange that he wasn't willing to fight just a little bit more for his land and people. Maybe that was just another thing the darkness had taken with it.

Sarah ran her hands over her steering wheel, having wished herself back into her car. There was a little hardware store at the edge of the city. Alyssa and Sarah had frequented it the first few months they lived together in the apartment, which wasn't exactly as advertised in the beginning. Sarah remembered that they sold cheap packets of seeds.

She turned her key in her ignition and wondered if it mattered that none of the plants she would be bringing into the new labyrinth were native. It wasn't as if anything in her world sold the lichen she had passed by while in the labyrinth, and she doubted that most of the trees she saw in the forest had their counterparts, either.

She decided it didn't matter as she pulled into the store's parking lot.

The seeds were where they always were, on a rotating shelf display. Sarah grabbed packets of sunflower seeds, and other things that looked hardy and like they might cover a lot of ground. After a moment of consideration, she grabbed one of the store's tiny metal carts and hefted three bags of grass seed inside of it. While the labyrinth would no doubt need far, far more than what she grabbed, she was still living on a student's budget. The seeds would have to do, for now. Maybe later, when she had more money to spare, she would visit a nursery and get as many tree seedlings as she could.

 _Oaks might be nice_ , she thought. _But definitely not dogwoods_.

Before much time passed, she found herself back in her complex's parking lot. The grass seed was in her trunk, and the flower seeds in their little packets in the plastic bags the cashier gave her. Sarah sat in the driver's seat and worked through the logistics of getting it all to the underground.

Either way, she would have to go back into her own apartment. She didn't want to leave her bag and keys sitting in her car again; though she didn't live in the worst neighborhood, she didn't live in the best, either. But if Jareth wasn't in the underground, he was most likely in her apartment. The though gave Sarah pause.

"Don't be silly," she told herself. "It's _your_ apartment."

Sarah decided that she would go inside, drop her things off, and grab a duffel bag to throw the seeds in. It would make a mess, but scattering handfuls of the seeds would be easier if they were all in one place. While she didn't particularly enjoy the idea of being the underground equivalent of Johnny Appleseed, she also didn't see a way around it. Unless the goblins could help, but… Sarah smiled to herself and turned the key in her apartment door's lock.

As soon as she opened the door, Sarah was immensely grateful that Alyssa wouldn't be home anytime soon. She was backpacking across the country with a few other friends, and so wasn't home to see the Goblin King stretched out on the couch, with mountains of magic residue piled up in the corners of the room. Whatever he had been doing in her apartment, it looked like he came close to trashing it.

The furniture looked okay, of course, and it wasn't as if a pipe had burst or a fire had started. But Sarah wasn't exactly looking forward to either talking him into cleaning it up himself or trying to figure out a way to do it herself. Plus, she sort of hoped she could avoid him for a little while. Not only did she want to avoid the topic of how she defeated the darkness, but having good news to give him might have gone a long way in softening that blow.

"So I take it you've gone back," she said, not really looking for an answer. She didn't mention that she'd warned him—that would have sounded too much like an "I told you so."

"I have," he said, swinging his feet to the floor. "It was as I expected."

 _Really?_ Sarah wanted to ask, but she steeled for quirking an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to talk about it?" She offered, shoving the plastic bag from the shop behind her back.

"No," he said immediately. "If it was meant to be this way, then it was meant to be; your friend Belinda might know a thing or two about that. But we must all make our sacrifices, mustn't we, Sarah?"

Sarah winced at his words, knowing where they were leading.

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not. It is a natural progression."

"Maybe, but you only got there because you don't want to talk about how you're not actually fine," she countered. "Which is... fine. If you don't want to talk, then you don't have to talk. But don't _lie_ to me. Please." Sarah didn't run immediately to her room to grab what she came in for because the conversation had grown heavier than she thought it would. She hadn't even expected to really see him—or talk to him—at all.

"But if you _want_ to talk about sacrifices, we can talk about how you shouldn't have done what you did. I told you I'd find a way. You didn't have to go and be all… heroic." She almost told him that he wasn't any good at it anyway, that she still had to come and save him after all of that, and he made it more difficult than it needed to be. But that would have been cruel. "Don't do that again. Don't scare me like that again."

Jareth squinted at her, as if trying to figure out if she was being serious or not. She never seemed to be afraid when she should have been, so of course _this_ would be the time she would express having fear. He hadn't been overly concerned in the moment. He hadn't thought she ever would be, considering how often she pushed both him and his world away.

"I _would_ like to talk about sacrifices, Sarah," he said.

" _No,_ " she warned, pursing her lips together. She shouldn't have brought it up. Now wasn't the time—not that she thought she would ever know when the time _was_ , but standing in her apartment, which was covered in glittery residue, was definitely not the time.

" _Yes_ ," he pushed, drawing himself up to his full height, which was only a few inches taller than Sarah. She wasn't intimidated; they were on much more equal footing in the here-and-now than they had been at any point before.

"Don't be a bully," she snapped. "Because you're not going to like what I have to tell you. Besides that, you're being really mean and _moody_. I don't think I deserve that. Care to tell me what's on your mind, Goblin King?"

She only used his title when her patience was wearing thin. He scowled at her, and she matched it with one of her own.

"You saved me," he said. "You saved me and you were not meant to. _I_ was supposed to save was supposed to save _you_. It was… _my_ land, and I was unable to do anything. But you did, Sarah."

"This is about your _pride?"_ She asked, incredulous. "This isn't about… I don't know, you almost dying? Your world being turned into a barren husk—sorry," she added when he flinched. "It's just… I don't understand. Of all the things…" Sarah shook her head and sighed. "Though it might make you feel a bit better that our sacrifices were about the same. You tried to sacrifice your life, and I…"

Sarah bit her lip, realizing what she just said.

If Jareth's eyebrows weren't already angled upwards, or if Sarah had been more used to them, the way he raised them would probably have had more of an effect on her. As it was, she thought that it might have brought some much-needed levity to the situation if they weren't both so irritated.

"I gave it a human life," she confessed. "I gave it mine. Or rather, my mortality."

There was, he thought, a certain poetry to the whole scenario. Sarah didn't seem to be much of a fame seeker, or if she was, she was not as egregious as her forebears. If Berywn had known the price to pay for finally defeating what Sarah called the darkness would have made him immortal, he would have paid it in a heartbeat. But the ancient king had been too afraid of his own mortality to think of it in that way, and Sarah—well, Sarah had perhaps been dealt a sort of boon in wishing her brother away.

"You _do_ realize, don't you precious, that you cannot complain of the sacrifice _I_ meant to make."

Sarah sighed, twisting the plastic bag in her hands behind her back. "I suppose so," she admitted. They were _both_ , perhaps, in the wrong. She was willing to admit that much. And they _both_ , perhaps, had a tendency to act first without much thought to anything else—or maybe she was just projecting.

"What is that?" he asked, nodding to the hands she still held behind her back.

"Well—" a faint blush rose across Sarah's cheeks. "Maybe it seems a little silly, now, but I thought… since everything is sort of _gone_ , I thought that maybe things could be replanted." At her mention of everything being gone, his face darkened just the slightest bit. If she hadn't been around him so often, she might not have noticed it at all.

But when she mentioned replanting, he seemed more then curious.

"You would want to rebuild?" He asked. "More to the point, you would like to help me rebuild?"

"Of course," she stated simply. "I know it's not really _my_ fault, but it was sort of my family's—even if they are pretty far flung from me. Besides, I promised everybody I would be back soon. Oh," she said, catching the look he shot her. " _Everybody_ means some goblins, Hoggle, and Ludo. I sent Sir Didymus on a quest to see how many others he could find."

He knew she should have been more concerned about them than he really was, but he also knew that if anything could survive the darkness with nary a scratch, it would be the goblins. Moping, which had been one of his favorite pastimes shortly after Berwyn ruined almost everything, was something he had sort of been looking forward to doing.

"Then I suppose I should see what you have been up to," he said, and with a wave of his hand the mess in the apartment was cleared away. Sarah made a mental note to ask him about that trick later.

* * *

 **A/N**

This story is winding down just as my semester is gearing up. I'd like to have this completely posted before things get too hectic. Ergo, bonus chapter!


	24. Chapter 24

Ludo and Hoggle were busy when Sarah was away. As far as Sarah could see, the ground looked like it had been through an upheaval. And, she supposed, it had. Before she and Jareth left her apartment, she'd filled the bad she grabbed with seeds and made him carry the bags of grass seed she couldn't. He didn't look too happy to be doing it, but he didn't put up too much of a fight, either.

"Wow," Sarah said, feeling her shoes sink into the ground the slightest bit. "Thank you Ludo, Hoggle! I can't believe how much it's changed!" And it had; the piles of rock that marked where manmade structures once were had disappeared, presumably into the ground. The pit that opened where the underground necropolis existed had somehow been filled in. The land was mostly flat to her right, but to her left she could see gentle hills forming. For as far as she could see, the bright blue of the sky met rich brown earth.

"Well," Sarah said, patting the bag at her side, "I suppose it's time to spread these."

But Muck was already beside her, tugging the bag's strap from her shoulder. The bag landed on the ground with a muffled _thump_ , and Muck made a sharp whistling noise.

Goblins—some so caked in dirt and debris that they were almost unrecognizable—seemed to materialize out of the very air. Sarah jumped in surprise, and Jareth made a strangled noise beside her. Evidently, Didymus had done his job well; there was quite a lot of them.

With the way everything else had changed because of what she now knew was Berwyn's influence, Sarah was a little surprised to see that aside from being extra grimy, the goblins looked relatively untouched. But before anything else, Jareth had been a god of the forest. The destroyed murals somewhere under her feet had once attested to that. Goblins, she supposed, belonged in a forest as much as they belonged anywhere else; it was simply serendipity that made them adaptable to life in a city.

Jareth's thoughts were not on the adaptability of his goblins, but their hardiness. How was it, he wondered, that they were fine—disgustingly filthy, even for them, but fine—while he himself had been laid out by the darkness? It was bad enough that despite his attempts, Sarah was the one to save them all. He had no doubt that she would hang it over his head, as he would hers. But to have his goblins bounce back when he had not was simply mortifying.

As if sensing where his thoughts were going, Sarah elbowed him; she had neither the time nor the patience for his wounded pride. She's hoped to but that behind them; he'd had only a little contact with the outside world, but she thought it was past time for him to put his chauvinistic ideals to rest.

Down somewhere around Sarah's knees, Muck was sifting through the bag. The seeds fell between the fingers on her little furred hands and she mixed them together.

"We accepts your gifts," she announced. Sarah, who had been more concerned with keeping another mope-fueled glitter storm from occurring, blinked down at Muck.

"Oh," said Sarah, who hadn't really thought of the seeds as gifts, "that's good."

All at once, and with an immediacy that almost made Sarah think they had practices beforehand, the goblins descended upon the bag. Sarah jumped back, just in case. Goblin after goblin took handfuls of seeds until the bag was completely empty. They disappeared almost as quickly as they'd been summoned by Muck, leaving Sarah to gape at Jareth.

Hoggle and Ludo did not take part in the frantic seed grabbing. Ludo had never been too fast, and his talents rested firmly in the earth, not growing things. Hoggle, meanwhile, had forgotten what it meant to be a part of a group. Flowers weren't exactly his forte either.

"Chaos is in their nature," Jareth said by way of explanation. It wasn't much of one; Sarah still didn't know what their nature _was_.

"They were never meant to live in a _castle_ , of all things. They are most likely excited to get back to their roots."

Sarah narrowed her eyes to a squint. "Was that a pun? Because it was a really bad one." At her feet, the seeds that were dropped were already sprouting. The goblins, she reminded herself, were magical creatures just like their king. Making seeds take root and sprout almost instantly was certainly a form of magic, though it felt thick and heavy in the air and coated her tongue with something that tasted like sunshine.

The fact that she could now taste magic only bothered Sarah a little.

But the goblin magic seemed to only be able to take the new plant life so far. One of two of the nearer goblins turned to look at Sarah, as if waiting for something. Even Hoggle waited expectantly. Sarah wasn't sure what to do, and didn't like the feeling of floundering.

Jareth cleared his throat and stepped forward, and Sarah realized the goblins weren't looking at her at all. Of course they weren't—Sarah wasn't the one who was an ex god. She felt silly, and her face heated in a momentary blush.

Jareth wasn't really once for speeches, unless he could intimidate teenage girls with them. Besides, the goblins wouldn't appreciate them anyway; they weren't the sort for listening to speeches. Instead, he raised his hands with an intricate flourish, she Sarah a smirk, and snapped his fingers.

The little sproutlings exploded with growth all around them. The magic that Sarah tasted intensified, flooding all of her senses. This time, however, it tasted like clear water and shadows, and the scent of both filled her nose. She could even _hear_ everything growing, but not because she gained any special hearing. Rushing something that would naturally take months—or even years—along in a few minutes was bound to be loud, no matter what it was. And the noise of grass and flowers shooting up at breakneck speed was almost deafening.

Sarah barely had time to react. By the time she could process what was happening, the grass was already up past her ankles. It shot up even further, eventually bowing under its own weight, darkening from a bright spring green to one that spoke of a false age.

The flowers were even stranger to watch. They shot up just as quickly, leaved unfurling and thickening as they grew and aged at an unnatural rate. Stems and bases thickened and swelled as flower buds formed and then exploded in a burst of petals. The goblins screeched and cheered even as the grass grew over them and up almost to Sarah's waist.

"Woah," was all that Sarah could say. She knew—had known, for a while—that magic existed. She knew that goblins existed and that wishes had power. Gods existed, and she was the current wielder of a long, long line of familial power. But watching a world turn from a dead thing to something bursting with life was not something she had prepared herself for.

What she expected to take several weeks, at least, had only taken minutes. Though there weren't any trees, the world otherwise didn't look like the darkness had touched it at all. She had plans to bring trees back in, eventually, but that would take time. There was nothing for her to do in the meantime.

With another extravagant flutter of his hands, barrels and barrels of what smelled suspiciously like beer appeared. Sarah thought that maybe she wouldn't have to bring trees back at all, not if he could simply materialize things already.

There was _almost_ a sense of completion to the whole thing, as if the powers that be had wrapped the whole ordeal up and tied it off with a bow. Almost. It seemed that the ending of a thing was marked with a party in Jareth's world, and Sarah couldn't figure out if she thought that was very forest god od him or not. God? Yes, they seemed to enjoy decadence.

Forest? …Not so much.

Regardless, this wasn't one that she necessarily felt entitled to. They were celebrating the return of things as they were, and she hadn't really been a part of that before. She watched as J swept into the crowd, looking every part the king he had become. The goblins crowded around him as he made his way over to the casks; a few of them be booted away good-naturedly. He had never been, and probably never would be, overly kind or coddling to the creatures he called his own, but they didn't seem to mind.

Sarah was left standing alone in the overgrown field, watching all of the activity. Ludo lumbered back into view and Didymus, as if called, by the drink, appeared on Ambrosius as well.

 _Convenient_ , Sarah kept thinking. _It is all very… convenient._ But maybe that was just how the end of an adventure was meant to be; she had _some_ experience with adventures, but not enough to allow herself a definitive answer. She caught Didymus's eye and motioned that he should follow her over to where Ludo and Hoggle had moved together.

It felt almost like all those years hadn't passes when they were all together. Everybody but her seemed unchanged, almost frozen in time.

"Hi," she said, not knowing how else to start.

"Yer leavin' again, ain't ya?" Hoggle asked abruptly. Sarah's face crumpled as she tried to push away her guilt.

"For a bit," she answered. "Not for forever, I think. But," she grabbed Hoggle's shoulders as she crouched down, grass almost obscuring her. "I need _all_ of you to know that you don't need to wait for me to need you. Or call you. You can come to see me any time, if that's what you want."

"Of course, my lady," Didymus said over Hoggle's huff. Ludo was silent. She paused, considering her next words carefully.

"Hoggle, do you remember when you told me I'd never get out of the labyrinth, even if I made it to the center?" She waited for him to nod. "You were right. I don't think I ever did."

She stood, depositing a kiss on each of their cheeks, and walked away. There was one more temporary goodbye she needed to give, but she didn't want to have to fight for attention. But when she looked towards the goblins crowing around the barrels, Jareth was nowhere to be seen.

"Looking for something?"

Sarah jumped and whirled around to find Jareth there.

"I was looking to say goodbye, not have a heart attack," she told him teasingly.

"Goodbye?" he echoed. "You wouldn't have to leave this time. This is your world as much as it is mine." Something flashed behind his eyes and she wondered if he, too, was thinking of the last time he tried to convince her to stay.

 _Just fear me, love me…_ Well, she might have one of those down, to a degree.

"You're not… done with it, are you?" For the first time, she thought she might have heard the ghost of insecurity in his voice. She shook her head, smiling.

"No, I don't think so. Besides that… I don't think it's done with me. But I _am_ going home. To my apartment," she clarified before he could twist her words. "They don't need me here, and I have a life to live elsewhere.

"You wouldn't have to," he murmured, gently pushing some hair out of her face.

"I do," she said firmly. "But…" she paused, and an odd expression flitted over her face. Before she could talk herself out of it, she rose up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his. "Whatever the future holds, we have forever to figure it out."

With another small smile at the expression on his face—equal parts stunned and contented—Sarah squeezed his hand.

And then she wished herself home.

* * *

 **A/N**

So. Here it is. The final chapter.

If you are deeply unsatisfied with the ending, please recall that this story is called Fairytale, _Refuted_. And if you're still unhappy, please know that this is not really the end. That's right! There's a sequel in the works. The _very early_ stages of works, as it is, so I'm not sure when I will be able to start actually writing it in earnest or when I might have an opportunity to post it. This upcoming semester promises to be challenging for me, and I ask for everybody to please have patience if you're sticking around.

The current working title for the sequel is Fate, Unwound. That might change, but I'm pretty happy with it at the moment. Keep an eye out! And as always, if you have any questions- _not_ about the details of the plot of the next one, of course ;p-feel free to send me a message! There are a few things I am willing to reveal, if asked, but I won't be giving a blow-by-blow account of it before it's even written.


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